UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I must be missing the point. From the prompt you are showing (# ), one would assume that root is running this code. Are you saying that root doesn't know the characters that he or she is typing into the terminal after receiving the prompt for a pass phrase from the encrypt utility?

What is it that you are trying to do?

The encrypt program can be run by any user to encrypt their files, its available on Solaris.

The example, I've ran above is under a non-root user.

But Corona688 did say that "There are no methods to protect from root, at all." So I'd like to know how can root user know the encryption key to decrypt a users file.

I'm trying to understand how Corona688 came to that conclusion.

You are talking about two different things. If a file is encrypted, only users who know the pass phrase or who have enough compute power to determine the pass phrase by brute force can read the plain text version of that encrypted file.

The topic of this thread, however, is how can a user encrypt a shell script file and let another user who does not know the pass phrase used to encrypt that script run that script without being able to read it as clear text. And, the answer is that it cannot be done.

If a script is obfuscated by its owner and can be run by somebody else without knowing the obfuscation method used, then anyone who has read access to the file can also read the clear text of that script and/or run the file.

And, if a file is made unreadable just by changing its mode, that will not keep any root user on that system from reading that file (both because root can read any file with any read permission bit set and because root can change the mode of any file to any mode they choose.)

I have assumed that you don't wish to type in a password every time you want to run that script, because 99.9% of the time, people don't.

If the script contains instructions for decrypting itself without a password, root can read it and decrypt it, because it literally contains step by step instructions for doing so. Root has full control of the machine. They can alter it to their needs. They can do things like subverting your profile, subverting system libraries, altering your environment, setting up full system traces on platforms which support it, and even doing minor alterations to the kernel. They could trace you typing in your password if they really, really want to, or (much more easily) fake you into typing the password into something else.

I won't go into more details, as I'm not in the business of making malicious hacks. But you cannot defend from root.