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Easy file encryption and decryption from the shell (See related posts)

Works on OS X, Linux, anywhere with OpenSSL installed:

To encrypt a file:
openssl des3 -salt -in infile.txt -out encryptedfile.txt


To decrypt the file:
openssl des3 -d -salt -in encryptedfile.txt -out normalfile.txt


Do not specify the same file as input and output on encryption.. I have noticed weird effects on OS X (it eats the file). Remove the -in * stuff if you want to pipe data into it (e.g. a tarred folder). Omit the -out * stuff if you want it to pipe data out on STDOUT.
to linux osx cli encryption shell openssl by peter on Fri May 27 07:17:25 -0400 2005

Comments on this post

toruvinn posts on Aug 28, 2007 at 19:58
Nice.
Also, for anyone having GnuPG installed:

gpg -c file

Asks for password and creates encrypted file.gpg with symmetric cipher (default is CAST5, but I'd suggest adding --cipher-algo AES256 ;-)). Of course, asks for password.

Decrypting is pretty easy too:
gpg -d file.gpg (output to stdout)
gpg -o file -d file.gpg (output to file)

Seems to `detect' the cipher used and, obviously, asks for password.
It's possible to include the password from file (--passphrase-file file) or even on the commandline (lol, security. --passphrase string).
VVildo posts on Jan 12, 2008 at 16:38
I put these commands into two scripts that I added to my path.

'encrypt file.txt' will create an encrypted file 'file.txt.des3'
'decrypt file.txt.des3' will decrypt the file to 'file.txt'

The -a option, not mentioned above, stores the encrypted file in base64 instead of binary.

~/bin/encrypt
#!/bin/bash
openssl des3 -a -in $1 -out $1.des3


~/bin/decrypt
#!/bin/bash
openssl des3 -d -a -in $1 -out ${1%.des3}

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