Use existing ssh public keys [1] to encrypt files!

This utility is no more than a toy. Rather powerful toy nevertheless. It was written as a proof of concept to show ability to use almost any appropriate public keys to encrypt data.

Sometimes there appear situations, when you have no other alternatives besides coreutils and ssh installed on the host. Well… If you can install in addition openssl, why don't install GnuPG? I don't know, but this script allows encrypt and sign files using only existing ssh keys with openssl as backend.

ssh_crypt [--help|-h] {--enc|-e}|{--dec|-d} --pub|-p pulic_key \
          --priv|-k private_key [--sign|-s] [--armor|-a] \
          [--verbose|-v] in_filename [out_filename]

in_filename

File to encrypt (mandatory)

out_file

File to save encrypted data. Can be omitted.

• This script uses openssl as a backend. So only RSA public keys may be used to encrypt file. Though for signing other types of keys go well, such as DSA or ECDSA. But ED25519 SSH2 keys are not compatible with openssl suite.
• Parameters --enc and --dec are mutual exclusive. If they appear together in the command line, only the first of them will be taken.
• If the name of out_file is omitted, in encryption mode it will be taken from in_filename with suffix .bin or .asc (depending of --armor option). In decryption mode filename will be restored from saved data or, if the file with the same name exists, suffix .decrypted will be added.