UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

His question was to prevent the file being viewed. So I assume the file owner is only user that should have access to it.

I'm not sure what the point of the password is then, if chmod is good enough.

Because if you chmod it, the root user would still be able to access it?

i think i found online solutions for this.

shc and enscryption

shc turns the script into binary. which is really appealing to me. but im reading reports that the content of the script can be easily viewed if someone ran ps -ef or something. on the running script.

i really, really appreciate the help that all the posters in this thread have provided. i really do! im going to thank each and every post.

As I posted last week:

Encryption really, really, really doesn't work that way, no matter how far down the rabbit hole you go.

There are no methods to protect from root, at all.

I am not speaking figuratively.

You are looking for a logical contradiction.

I'm interested to know more.

For instance, if a user encrypts an ascii file using the following method:

Code:

# echo hello > hello.out
#
# encrypt -a aes -i hello.out -o hello.out.encrypted
Enter key:
# ls -lrth hello.out hello.out.encrypted
-rw-r-----   1 sysadmin   other         6 Mar 28 15:00 hello.out
-rw-r-----   1 sysadmin   other        56 Mar 28 15:01 hello.out.encrypted
# file hello.out hello.out.encrypted
hello.out:      ascii text
hello.out.encrypted:    data
#

When the encrypt program asks the user to insert a key, how can root user capture the input?

Moderator's Comments:

Please use CODE tags when displaying sample input, sample output, and code segments.