Provided by: ccrypt_1.10-4_amd64 bug

NAME

       ccrypt - encrypt and decrypt files and streams

SYNOPSIS

       ccrypt [mode] [options] [file...]
       ccencrypt [options] [file...]
       ccdecrypt [options] [file...]
       ccat [options] file...

DESCRIPTION

       ccrypt  is  a  utility for encrypting and decrypting files and streams. It was designed to
       replace the standard unix crypt  utility,  which  is  notorious  for  using  a  very  weak
       encryption  algorithm.   ccrypt  is based on the Rijndael block cipher, a version of which
       was also chosen by the U.S. government as  the  Advanced  Encryption  Standard  (AES,  see
       http://www.nist.gov/aes).  This  cipher  is  believed to provide very strong cryptographic
       security.

       Unlike unix crypt, the algorithm provided by ccrypt  is  not  symmetric,  i.e.,  one  must
       specify  whether  to  encrypt  or decrypt. The most common way to invoke ccrypt is via the
       commands ccencrypt and ccdecrypt.

       Encryption and decryption depends on a keyword (or key phrase) supplied by  the  user.  By
       default,  the  user is prompted to enter a keyword from the terminal. Keywords can consist
       of any  number  of  characters,  and  all  characters  are  significant  (although  ccrypt
       internally hashes the key to 256 bits). Longer keywords provide better security than short
       ones, since they are less likely to be discovered by exhaustive search.

MODES

       ccrypt can operate in five different modes.  If more than one mode is specified, the  last
       one specified takes precedence. The aliases ccencrypt, ccdecrypt, and ccat are provided as
       a convenience; they are equivalent to ccrypt -e, ccrypt -d, and ccrypt -c, respectively.

       -e, --encrypt  Encrypt. This is the default mode. If filename arguments are given, encrypt
                      the  files  and  append the suffix .cpt to their names. Otherwise, run as a
                      filter.

       -d, --decrypt  Decrypt. If filename arguments are given, decrypt the files and  strip  the
                      suffix .cpt from the filenames, if present. Otherwise, run as a filter.

       -c, --cat      Decrypt  one or more files to standard output. If no filename arguments are
                      given, decrypt as a filter. Implies -l.

       -x, --keychange
                      Change the key of encrypted data. In this  mode,  ccrypt  prompts  for  two
                      passwords:  the  old one and the new one.  If filename arguments are given,
                      modify the files. Otherwise, run as a filter.

       -u, --unixcrypt
                      Simulate the old unix crypt command. Note: the cipher used  by  unix  crypt
                      has  been  broken and is not secure. Please use this option only to decrypt
                      existing files.  If filename arguments are  given,  decrypt  the  files  to
                      stdout.  Otherwise,  run  as a filter. Note that for the unix crypt format,
                      there is no easy way to detect whether a given key matches  or  not;  thus,
                      for safety, this mode does not overwrite files.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported in addition to the modes described above:

       -b, --brave    When  reading  an  encryption key from the terminal, ask the user only once
                      for the key. By default, ccrypt will ask the user to enter such keys twice,
                      as  a safeguard against accidentally destroying data due to a mistyped key.
                      Using the --brave option disables this safety check. Never use  it,  unless
                      you know what you are doing. See also --timid.

       -E var, --envvar var
                      Read  the  keyword from the environment variable var.  Note that this might
                      be unsafe on certain systems, namely where users can use the ps command  to
                      see  the  environment  of  a  process owner by another user. On most modern
                      systems, however, such behavior of ps is disabled and the -E option  should
                      be  safe  there.   Also,  as  an  added security measure, ccrypt erases the
                      keyword from its environment immediately after reading it.

       -f, --force    Overwrite existing files or operate on write-protected files without asking
                      any  questions.  Also,  override  ccrypt's  reluctance  to  write  or  read
                      encrypted data to or from a terminal.

       -F var, --envvar2 var
                      Same as -E, except for second keyword (in keychange mode).

       -h, --help     Help. Print usage information and exit.

       -H key, --key2 key
                      Same as -K, except for second keyword (in keychange mode).

       -k file, --keyfile file
                      Read the keyword as the first line from the named file. In keychange  mode,
                      two  keywords are read as the first two lines of the file. The filename "-"
                      may be given for reading keywords from standard  input.   Using  the  -k  -
                      option  and sending the keyword on stdin is probably the safest way to pass
                      a keyword to ccrypt from another program or script.

       -K key, --key key
                      Specify the keyword on the command line. This is unsafe, because any  other
                      user  can  see  the  command line by running the ps command.  Only use this
                      option for testing purposes, and never with a real keyword.

       -y file, --keyref file
                      In encryption or keychange mode, check the encryption key against the named
                      file,  which  must  have  been previously encrypted with the same key. Exit
                      with an error message if the key does not match. This option is  useful  as
                      an  alternative  to  --timid,  to guard against mistyped keys in situations
                      where several files are encrypted with the same key.  This  option  implies
                      --brave,  unless  the --timid option is explicitly given after the --keyref
                      option.

       -l, --symlinks Force encryption/decryption of symbolic links. By default,  symbolic  links
                      are  ignored except in cat or unixcrypt mode. Note that with the -l option,
                      encryption/decryption of a symbolic link  causes  the  suffix  .cpt  to  be
                      added/removed  from  the name of the link, not the name of the file pointed
                      to.

       -L, --license  Print license info and exit.

       -m, --mismatch Normally, ccrypt refuses to decrypt data with a key that does not  seem  to
                      match.  The  -m  option  overrides  this restriction. This can sometimes be
                      useful in recovering data from a corrupted file (see RECOVERING  DATA  FROM
                      CORRUPTED  FILES). To avoid irretrievable loss of data when decrypting with
                      a wrong key, this option cannot be used with modes that overwrite the input
                      file.

       -P prompt, --prompt prompt
                      Use  prompt instead of the default prompt "Enter encryption/decryption key:
                      ".  This may be useful in some shell scripts.

       -q, --quiet    Suppress most warnings.

       -Q prompt, --prompt2 prompt
                      Same as -P, except for second keyword (in keychange mode).

       -r, --recursive
                      Traverse subdirectories recursively.

       -R, --rec-symlinks
                      Traverse subdirectories recursively, and  also  follow  symbolic  links  to
                      subdirectories.

       -s, --strictsuffix
                      Refuse to encrypt files that already have the .cpt suffix (or that selected
                      with -S). This can be useful when adding  some  files  to  a  directory  of
                      already  encrypted  files.  This  option  has  no  effect  in decryption or
                      keychange mode.

       -S .suf, --suffix .suf
                      Use the suffix .suf instead of the default suffix .cpt.

       -t, --timid    When reading an encryption key from the terminal, ask the user to enter the
                      key  twice.  If  the  two entered keys are not identical, abort.  This is a
                      safeguard against accidentally destroying data  by  encrypting  it  with  a
                      mistyped key. Note: this behavior is now the default, and can be overridden
                      with the --brave option.

       -T, --tmpfiles This   option   causes   ccrypt   to    use    temporary    files    during
                      encryption/decryption,   rather   than   overwriting   the   file  contents
                      destructively. This method leaves the original file contents  lying  around
                      in  unused  sectors  of  the  file system, and thus is less secure than the
                      default behavior. However, in situations where this loss of security is not
                      important,  the  --tmpfiles  option  can  provide  a  measure of protection
                      against data being corrupted due  to  a  system  crash  in  the  middle  of
                      overwriting a file.

       -v, --verbose  Print progress information to stderr.

       -V, --version  Print version info and exit.

       --             End of options. Any remaining arguments are interpreted as filenames.  This
                      also turns off filter mode, even if zero filenames follow.  This  might  be
                      useful  in  the context of shell pattern expansion; ccrypt -- * will behave
                      correctly even if no files match the pattern *.

NOTES ON USAGE

       The user interface of ccrypt intentionally resembles that of GNU gzip, although it is  not
       identical.  When  invoked  with  filename arguments, ccrypt normally modifies the files in
       place, overwriting their old content. Unlike gzip, the output is not first  written  to  a
       temporary  file;  instead,  the  data  is  literally  overwritten. For encryption, this is
       usually the desired behavior, since one does not want copies of the  unencrypted  data  to
       remain  in  hidden  places  in  the  file  system.  The  disadvantage is that if ccrypt is
       interrupted in the middle of writing to a file, the file  will  end  up  in  a  corrupted,
       partially  encrypted  state.  However, in such cases it is possible to recover most of the
       data; see RECOVERING DATA FROM CORRUPTED FILES below. If you want to force ccrypt  to  use
       temporary files, use the --tmpfiles option.

       When  ccrypt receives an interrupt signal (Ctrl-C) while updating a file in place, it does
       not exit immediately, but rather delays the exit until after it finishes  writing  to  the
       current  file.  This  is  to  prevent  files  from  being  partially  overwritten and thus
       corrupted. If you want to force ccrypt  to  exit  immediately,  just  press  Ctrl-C  twice
       quickly.

       The encryption algorithm used by ccrypt uses a random seed that is different each time. As
       a result, encrypting the same file twice will never yield the same result.  The  advantage
       of  this  method  is  that  similarities  in  plaintext  do  not  lead  to similarities in
       ciphertext; there is no way of telling whether the  content  of  two  encrypted  files  is
       similar or not.

       Because of the use of a random seed, decrypting and re-encrypting a file with the same key
       will not lead to an identical file. It is primarily for this reason that ccrypt refuses to
       decrypt  files  with  a  non-matching  key;  if  this  were allowed, there would be no way
       afterwards to restore the original file, and the data would be irretrievably lost.

       When overwriting files, special care is taken with hard links  and  symbolic  links.  Each
       physical file (i.e., each inode) is processed at most once, no matter how many paths to it
       are encountered on the command line or in subdirectories traversed recursively.  For  each
       file  that  has  multiple hard links, a warning is printed, to alert the user that not all
       paths to the file might have been properly renamed.  Symbolic links are ignored except  in
       cat mode, or unless the -l or -R option is given.

       Unlike gzip, ccrypt does not complain about files that have improper suffixes. It is legal
       to doubly encrypt a file. It is also legal to decrypt a file that does not have  the  .cpt
       suffix,  provided  the  file  contains  valid  data  for the given decryption key. Use the
       --strictsuffix option if you want to prevent ccrypt from  encrypting  files  that  already
       have a .cpt suffix.

       Regarding  encryption  and  compression: encrypted data is statistically indistinguishable
       from random data, and thus it cannot be compressed.  But  of  course  it  is  possible  to
       compress the data first, then encrypt it. Suggested file suffixes are .gz.cpt or .gzc.

RECOVERING DATA FROM CORRUPTED FILES

       Encrypted data might be corrupted for a number of reasons. For instance, a file might have
       been partially encrypted or decrypted if ccrypt was interrupted while processing the file.
       Or  data might be corrupted by a software or hardware error, or during transmission over a
       network. The encryption algorithm used by  ccrypt  is  designed  to  allow  recovery  from
       errors. In general, only a few bytes of data will be lost near where the error occurred.

       Data  encrypted  by ccrypt can be thought of as a sequence of 32-byte blocks. To decrypt a
       particular block, ccrypt only needs to know the decryption key,  the  data  of  the  block
       itself,  and  the data of the block immediately preceding it. ccrypt cannot tell whether a
       block is corrupted or not, except the very first block, which is  special.  Thus,  if  the
       encrypted data has been altered in the middle or near the end of a file, ccrypt can be run
       to decrypt it as usual, and most of the data will  be  decrypted  correctly,  except  near
       where the corruption occurred.

       The very first block of encrypted data is special, because it does not actually correspond
       to any plaintext data; this block holds the random  seed  generated  at  encryption  time.
       ccrypt also uses the very first block to decide whether the given keyword matches the data
       or not. If the first block has been corrupted, ccrypt will likely decide that the  keyword
       does  not  match;  in such cases, the -m option can be used to force ccrypt to decrypt the
       data anyway.

       If a file contains some encrypted and some unencrypted data, or data  encrypted  with  two
       different  keys,  one  should  decrypt  the entire file with each applicable key, and then
       piece together the meaningful parts manually.

       Finally, decryption will only produce meaningful results if the data is aligned  correctly
       along  block  boundaries.  If the block boundary information has been lost, one has to try
       all 32 possibilities.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CIPHER

       Block ciphers operate on data segments of a fixed  length.   For  instance,  the  Rijndael
       block  cipher used in ccrypt has a block length of 32 bytes or 256 bits. Thus, this cipher
       encrypts 32 bytes at a time.

       Stream ciphers operate on data streams of any length. There are several standard modes for
       operating  a  block cipher as a stream cipher. One such standard is Cipher Feedback (CFB),
       defined in NIST Special Publication 800-38A and  ANSI  X3.106-1983.  ccrypt  implements  a
       stream cipher by operating the Rijndael block cipher in CFB mode.

       Let P[i] and C[i] be the ith block of the plaintext and ciphertext, respectively. CFB mode
       specifies that

              C[i] = P[i] ^ E(k,C[i-1])

       Here ^ denotes the bitwise exclusive or function, and E(k,x) denotes the encryption of the
       block  x  under  the  key  k using the block cipher. Thus, each block of the ciphertext is
       calculated from the corresponding block of plaintext and the previous block of ciphertext.
       Note  that  in  fact,  each  byte of P[i] can be calculated from the corresponding byte of
       C[i], so that the stream cipher can be applied to one byte at a time. In  particular,  the
       stream length need not be a multiple of the block size.

       Assuming  that  blocks  are numbered starting from 0, a special "initial" ciphertext block
       C[-1] is needed to provide the base case for the above formula. This value C[-1] is called
       the  initialization  vector  or seed. The seed is chosen at encryption time and written as
       the first block of the encrypted stream. It is important that the seed  is  unpredictable;
       in  particular,  the  same  seed  should never by used more than once.  Otherwise, the two
       resulting ciphertext blocks C[0] could be related by a simple xor  to  obtain  information
       about  the  corresponding  plaintext blocks P[0].  If unpredictable seeds are used, CFB is
       provably as secure as the underlying block cipher.

       In ccrypt, the seed is constructed as follows: first, a nonce is contructed by  hashing  a
       combination  of  the  host  name, current time, process id, and an internal counter into a
       28-byte value, using a cryptographic hash function. The nonce is  combined  with  a  fixed
       four-byte "magic number", and the resulting 32-byte value is encrypted by one round of the
       Rijndael block cipher with the given key. This encrypted block is used  as  the  seed  and
       appended  to the beginning of the ciphertext. The use of the magic number allows ccrypt to
       detect non-matching keys before decryption.

SECURITY

       ccrypt is believed to provide very strong cryptographic security, equivalent  to  that  of
       the  Rijndael  cipher with 256-bit block size and 256-bit key size. Another version of the
       Rijndael cipher (with a smaller block size) is used  in  the  U.S.  government's  Advanced
       Encryption  Standard  (AES,  see  http://www.nist.gov/aes). Therefore, this cipher is very
       well studied and subject to intensive public  scrutiny.   This  scrutiny  has  a  positive
       effect  on the cipher's security. In particular, if an exploitable weakness in this cipher
       were ever discovered, this would become widely publicized.

       In practical terms, the security of ccrypt means that, without knowledge of the encryption
       key,  it  is  effectively  impossible to obtain any information about the plaintext from a
       given ciphertext. This is true even if a large number of  plaintext-ciphertext  pairs  are
       already  known  for the same key. Moreover, because ccrypt uses a key size of 256 bits, an
       exhaustive search of the key space is not feasible, at least as long as sufficiently  long
       keys are actually used in practice. No cipher is secure if users choose insecure keywords.

       On  the  other  hand, ccrypt does not attempt to provide data integrity, i.e., it will not
       attempt to detect whether the ciphertext was modified  after  encryption.  In  particular,
       encrypted  data can be truncated, leaving the corresponding decrypted data also truncated,
       but otherwise consistent. If one needs to ensure data integrity as well as  secrecy,  this
       can  be  achieved  by  other methods. The recommended method is to prepend a cryptographic
       hash (for instance, an SHA-1 hash) to the data before encryption.

       ccrypt does not claim to provide any particular safeguards against information leaking via
       the  local operating system. While reasonable precautions are taken, there is no guarantee
       that keywords and plaintexts have been physically erased after  encryption  in  completed;
       parts  of  such data might still exist in memory or on disk. ccrypt does not currently use
       privileged memory pages.

       When encrypting files, ccrypt by default accesses them in read-write mode.  This  normally
       causes  the  original  file  to  be physically overwritten, but on some file systems, this
       might not be the case.

       Note that the use of the -K option is unsafe  in  a  multiuser  environment,  because  the
       command line of a process is visible to other users running the ps command. The use of the
       -E option is potentially unsafe for the same reason, although recent versions of ps  don't
       tend  to  display  environment  information  to  other users.  The use of the -T option is
       unsafe for encryption because the original plaintext will remain in unused sectors of  the
       file system.

EMACS PACKAGE

       There  is  an  emacs  package  for  reading  and writing encrypted files.  (Note that this
       package currently only works with emacs, not with xemacs.)  This package  hooks  into  the
       low-level  file  I/O  functions  of  emacs,  prompting  the  user  for  a  password  where
       appropriate. It is implemented in much the same way as support for  compressed  files.  If
       you  have  both  the  ps-ccrypt and jka-compr packages installed, emacs can open encrypted
       files and compressed files; however, it  does  not  currently  work  for  files  that  are
       encrypted and compressed.

       To  use the package, simply load ps-ccrypt, then edit as usual.  When you open a file with
       the ".cpt" extension, emacs will prompt you for a password for the file. It will  remember
       the  password  for  the buffer, and when you save the file later, it will be automatically
       encrypted again (provided you save it with a ".cpt" extension). Except  for  the  password
       prompt,  the  operation  of the package should be transparent to the user. The command M-x
       ccrypt-set-buffer-password can be used to change the current password of a buffer.

       The simplest way to use this package is to include the lines

              (setq load-path (cons "path" load-path))
              (require 'ps-ccrypt "ps-ccrypt.el")

       in your .emacs file, where path is the directory that holds the file ps-ccrypt.el.

       Limitations of the emacs package: there  is  no  guarantee  that  unencrypted  information
       cannot  leak to the file system; in fact, the package sometimes writes unencrypted data to
       temporary  files.  However,  auto-saved  files  are  normally  treated  correctly   (i.e.,
       encrypted).  For details, see the comments in the file ps-ccrypt.el.

EXIT STATUS

       The  exit status is 0 on successful completion, and non-zero otherwise.  An exit status of
       1 means illegal command line, 2 is out of memory or another system error, 3 is a fatal i/o
       error,  4 is a non-matching key or wrong file format, 6 is interrupt, 7 is mistyped key in
       --timid mode, 8 is a non-fatal i/o error, and 9 means that no key was obtained because the
       user  failed  to  enter it, or because the specified keyfile or environment variable could
       not be read. An exit status of 10 means that the file specified  by  the  --keyref  option
       could not be read, or did not match the requested encryption key.

       Fatal  i/o  errors are those that occur while processing a file that is already open. Such
       errors cause ccrypt to abort its operation immediately with an exit status of 3. Non-fatal
       i/o errors are those that occur while handling files that are not already open; typically,
       such errors are caused by files that are missing, not readable, or can't be created.  When
       encountering  a non-fatal i/o error, ccrypt simply continues to process the next available
       input file. The exit status of 8 is delayed until after all the files have been processed.

       Non-matching keys and wrong file formats are also considered non-fatal errors,  and  cause
       ccrypt  to  continue  with processing the next available input file. In this case, an exit
       status of 4 is given after all the files have been  processed.  If  there  is  a  conflict
       between exit status 4 and 8, then 8 is returned.

       The  former  exit  status  5 ("wrong file format") has been eliminated, and is now covered
       under exit status 4 ("non-matching key or wrong file format"). Note that ccrypt  does  not
       really  have  a "file format" in the proper sense of the word; any file of length at least
       32 bytes is potentially a valid encrypted file.

BUGS

       While ccrypt can handle keywords of arbitrary length, some  operating  systems  limit  the
       length of an input line to 1024 characters.

       The  renaming  of files (adding or removing the .cpt suffix) can go wrong if a filename is
       repeated on the command line.  In this case, the file is  only  encrypted/decrypted  once,
       but  the  suffix  may  be added or removed several times. This is because ccrypt thinks it
       encountered different hardlinks for the same file.

       The --strictsuffix option can behave in unexpected ways if one file has several hardlinks,
       some  of  which  have  the suffix and some of which don't. In this case, the inode will be
       encrypted/decrypted, but the suffix will be changed only for those  filenames  that  allow
       it.  Similarly,  if  a  file  cannot  be  renamed because a file of the given name already
       exists, the file may still be encrypted/decrypted if it has another hardlink.

VERSION

       1.10

AUTHOR

       Peter Selinger <selinger at users.sourceforge.net>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2000-2012 Peter Selinger

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the  GNU  General  Public  License  as  published  by the Free Software Foundation; either
       version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY  WARRANTY;
       without  even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program;
       if  not,  write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
       MA 02111-1307, USA. See also http://www.gnu.org/.