Once in a while a person might like to encrypt a file for security purposes. In Linux it is real easy to create good encryption using openssl with the Triple-DES Cipher.:

openssl des3 -salt -in unencrypted-data.file \ -out encrypted-data.file.des3

After entering this command, openssl will ask for you to enter the password twice. And decryption is likewise:

openssl des3 -d -salt -in encrypted-data.file.des3 \ -out unencrypted-data.file

Warning: Make sure you don’t accidentaly reverse the file names in the decryption process or you’ll lose all your data!

Remembering this command though is the tricky bit so I decided to create a couple bash scripts that made the process thoughtless. I named the bash scripts “ crypten ” and “ cryptde “.

#!/bin/bash # crypten - a script to encrypt files using openssl FNAME = $1 if [[ -z " $FNAME " ]] ; then echo " crypten <name of file> " echo " - crypten is a script to encrypt files using des3 " exit ; fi openssl des3 -salt -in " $FNAME " -out " $FNAME .des3 "

The filename ends with .des3 to be easy to recognize.

#!/bin/bash # cryptde - a script to decrypt files using openssl FNAME = $1 if [[ -z " $FNAME " ]] ; then echo " cryptde <name of file> " echo " - cryptde is a script to decrypt des3 encrypted files " exit ; fi openssl des3 -d -salt -in " $FNAME " -out " ${ FNAME % .[^.]* } "

I like to put my bash scripts in a ~/.bin folder. Don’t forget to make both files executable:

chmod +x crypten cryptde

This shouldhelp make encrypting/decrypting files easier.