Encrypting an hiding files on a vps

Question

Recently me and a friend bought a vps. We use it mainly to mess around with but also as a remote workstation. Now we sometimes let other people use it. My goal is to hide and encrypt sensitive documents and scripts that I don't want to be made public. My first thought was to write a python script to encrypt them and one to decrypt them using the pyaescrypt module. But I am wondering if there is a better way of doing this than making a script; a better way of password protecting my files.

Answer 1

There are lots of options. Pretty much they all require you to maintain the root password as a secret (and don't allow users to su or sudo to get root privileges).

Here are two suggestions for a starting point

1. Use ordinary UNIX/Linux permissions so that others can't access your home directory
2. Lock your other users into a chroot jail

If your goal is to stop others accessing your data, #1 should be perfectly sufficient.