Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

Code:

echo "mypassword" | crypt "tom"

But this is giving me some unreadable strange looking characters / symbols never seen before which I cant even copy and save in a file.

Code:

SunOS mymac 5.10 Generic_150400-26 sun4v sparc sun4v

Can you help me with encrypting the password "mypassword" in readable string ?

Isn't that exactly what you want to do - encrypt some clear text into something unreadable to the world that can be retrieved only if the password is known? Don't copy and paste the result; save it in a file immediately. That file can be decrypted by applying crypt "tom" again.

Warning (from man crypt):

Can you please confirm if crypt can do what I want it to do ?

openssl can be used with RSA algo and it gives encrypted text in readable format which can also be copied.

It's a very naïve and personal requirement. Not caring too much about it being full proof.

So, what do you want it to do overall? (not just the one line)

I would expect that echo "mypassword" | crypt "tom" > encrypted_file will write your encrypted password into a file just fine, from where you can read it back, but what is the purpose?

The display you see will depend on a combination of a number of factors, such as locale, character sets for the terminal type defined, character set of the display you are using etc. You cannot reliably use the screen to just copy & paste the display for use elsewhere. You would need to copy the file of get it into a variable to use somehow.

If your script to retrieve it has the decryption password tom, the source file name and the method to extract it, then anyone who can read the code can get the password.

It's a common conundrum - how do you encrypt something and automate the decryption without just sharing the decryption.


If you can share a little more about the overall plan of your code, then we might be able to suggest something suitable.



Kind regards,
Robin

I just need the password to look visibly different than the actual password.

The encrypted password should be a string readable to humans.

So, I just need it to mask the password.

Code:

echo "mypassword" | base64
bXlwYXNzd29yZAo=

However you do it, it will be easy to reverse the process, so what is actually the purpose of encrypting it?



Robin