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- Simple File Encryption with OpenSSL
- December 12, 2007
- Linux has plenty of powerful encryption software, but what can you use if you just want to secure a couple files quickly? The OpenSSL toolkit works well for this. It comes installed with Ubuntu and can provide stronger encryption than you would ever need.
- This is the basic command to encrypt a file:
- openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -in secrets.txt -out secrets.txt.enc
- How does this work?
- openssl is the command for the OpenSSL toolkit.
- aes-256-cbc is the encryption cipher to be used. (256bit AES is what the United States government uses to encrypt information at the Top Secret level.)
- -a means that the encrypted output will be base64 encoded, this allows you to view it in a text editor or paste it in an email. This is optional.
- -salt adds strength to the encryption and should always be used.
- -in secrets.txt specifies the input file.
- -out secrets.txt.enc specifies the output file.
- You will be prompted for a password.
- It’s not much use unless you can decrypted it:
- openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a -in secrets.txt.enc -out secrets.txt.new
- -d decrypts data.
- -a tells OpenSSL that the encrypted data is in base64.
- -in secrets.txt.enc specifies the data to decrypt.
- -out secrets.txt.new specifies the file to put the decrypted data in.
- Try out OpenSSL by decrypting this string (the password is pass):
- U2FsdGVkX18YcWkbmhsN7M/MP1E+GLf4IqmNsa53T+A=
- You can paste it into a text file and use the commands above, or use this command instead:
- echo U2FsdGVkX18YcWkbmhsN7M/MP1E+GLf4IqmNsa53T+A= | openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a
- See the OpenSSL man page for more detail on what it can do.
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