How do I encrypt text with openssl
?
The openssl
CLI tool is a bag of random tricks. One of them is the enc
command. Here’s an example of encrypting and decrypting some text:
$ echo 'super secret message' > plain.txt
$ openssl enc -k secretpassword123 -aes256 -base64 -e -in plain.txt -out cipher.txt
$ cat cipher.txt
U2FsdGVkX1+vXUvo9fOehyq11uH+za8COV/+UScl2w6JPiFoVm3pte639CMDBMTB
$ openssl enc -k secretpassword123 -aes256 -base64 -d -in cipher.txt -out plain_again.txt
$ cat plain_again.txt
super secret message
Here,
-k secretpassword123
sets the password for encryption and decryption-aes256
selects the cipher type, of which there are many-base64
sets encryption to base64-encode the result, and decryption to base64-decode the input-e
tellsopenssl
to encrypt the-in
file;-d
tells it to decrypt the-in
file
Tagged . All content copyright James Fisher 2017. This post is not associated with my employer.