forgot passphrase

Question

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 and did a full encryption. I did not restart for a few weeks and now forget my pass phrase, I remember the component sets of the password I think yet forgetting the order.

I have a lot of creative works on there and do not wish to reinstall yet. Is there any way arrive this with login password? Thanks for your time in this silly question. I have not familiarized myself in the ways I should have and my friend took my only written version sneaking thinking I was going to leave it there while adventuring.

Solution

If you used ecryptfs for encryption (which I think is the standard encryption Ubuntu offers on install) then your password was used to wrap (encrypt) the actual disk encryption key.

It's pretty easy to change your user password (using a live usb/cd) and log in again if it's only your home that was encrypted, but recovering the encrypted data will require your old user password.

If there's a written version of your password somewhere, getting that would be the easiest solution. Otherwise you'll have to guess or remember what the old password was to have a hope of unencrypting the data this century.

Comments

[Tim]

Sorry - have to lol at this :) I think you have to remember it - no one here is going to tell you how to hack encryption because then you could hack anyone's...

[Xen2050]

Hopefully, there is no way to hack anyone's encryption (unless you have a billion dollars worth of hardware), but guessing passphrases can be useful to legitimate forgetful users, as well as criminals.

[Xen2050]

But if you're forgetful (like me & almost everyone after a few years) then BACKUP YOUR PASSPHRASE! :-P