kaesea2 / encrypting-and-decrypting-files-with-ccrypt

Encrypting and Decrypting Files with ccrypt

ccrypt is based on the Rijndael cipher, which provides strong security against brute force attacks and meets the Advances Encryption Standard (AES). its a symmetric key encryption (i.e same key for encryption and decrypting)

for this task, we’ll create a file and add content to it, then use ccrypt to encrypt, change its encryption key and decrypt it.

install ccrypt

apt-get install ccrypt

to see the help menu

ccrypt -h

next we’ll create a file to test the encryption

echo "this is super secret information" > testfile
cat testfile
ccrypt testfile

when prompted, enter a password. for this test purpose, i entered 123456789 as my password

ls
cat testfile.cpt

to cat the file content using ccrypt and enter the password 123456789

ccat testfile.cpt

changing the encryption key

ccrypt -x testfile.cpt

use ccat to read the file again and confirm the key change

ccat testfile.cpt

decrypting the file

ccrypt -d testfile.cpt