Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
AESCRYPT(1)		     General Commands Manual		     AESCRYPT(1)

NAME
     aescrypt  --  encrypt data using Rijndael, the Advanced Encryption Standard
     winner

SYNOPSIS
     aescrypt -k keyfile [-s keysize]

DESCRIPTION
     The aescrypt utility encrypts data using the Rijndael algorithm, the winner
     of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) competition.  The  encryption  is
     done in Cipher Block Feedback (CFB-128) mode, with the salt randomly gener-
     ated  from  data  read from the /dev/urandom device.  The plaintext data is
     read from standard input and the encrypted data is written to standard out-
     put.

     The encryption key may be read from standard input or from a file,  depend-
     ing  on  the argument passed to the -k command-line option.  If "-" is used
     as a filename, the aescrypt utility reads as  many  hexadecimal  digits  as
     needed from standard input and then one additional byte to allow for a new-
     line separating the key from the actual data to be encrypted.  If the file-
     name  is  not  "-", the aescrypt utility opens the specified file and reads
     text lines from it until  a  line	starting  with	the  characters  kk=  is
     reached.	Those characters should be immediately followed by as many hexa-
     decimal digits as needed; the rest of the line, as well as the rest of  the
     file, is ignored.

     The  encryption  key  may	be  128, 192, or 256 bits long.  By default, the
     aescrypt utility uses (and expects to read) a 128-bit key, unless a differ-
     ent size is supplied by the -s keysize command-line option.

     The aescrypt utility reads 16 bytes (128 bits) from the /dev/urandom device
     to initialize the salt for the CFB-128 encryption.  The salt  is  prepended
     to the encrypted data in the output.

EXAMPLES
     Generate  a  random  128-bit value and store it into a keyfile suitable for
     the aescrypt utility:

	   perl -e 'open(F, "<", "/dev/random") or die("$!\n"); read(F, $s, 32);
	   print "kk=".unpack("H*", $s)."\n"'

     Encrypt the contents of the /etc/hosts file with the generated (128-bit  by
     default) key:

	   aescrypt -k key.txt < /etc/hosts > hosts.aes

     Encrypt a string with a 192-bit key supplied directly:

	   (echo  '012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567'; echo 'This
	   is a test.') | ./aescrypt -s 192 -k - > test.aes

SEE ALSO
     aesget(1)

     The SourceForge project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aescrypt/

HISTORY
     The aescrypt utility was written by Eric Lee Green, and was modified to use
     Rijndael rather than Twofish by Randy Kaelber.  It uses the  freely  avail-
     able Rijndael implementation by Antoon Bosselaers and Vincent Rijmen.  This
     manual page was written by Peter Pentchev in 2008.

AUTHORS
     The  aescrypt  utility  -	Eric  Lee Green <eric@badtux.org>, Randy Kaelber
     <randyk@sourceforge.net>.

     The manual page - Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>.

FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly	  June 8, 2008			     AESCRYPT(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=aescrypt&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

home | help