How to encrypt and decrypt a string/text in shell (linux environment)

Question

I have a string, which is actually password. I want to encrypt the string and want to store the encrypted result in a parameter file. Next during execution of a script that encrypted string will be picked up and in run time that will be decrypt. So I want to know how to encrypt and decrypt a string/text in linux environment?

Answer 1

This isn't quite what was being asked for here but it shows a simple way to do this without a password prompt

Using:

openssl version
LibreSSL 2.8.3

encode.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo $1 | openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -pass pass:somepassword

decode.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo $1 | openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a -pass pass:somepassword

make files executable

chmod +x encode.sh decode.sh

encode example

./encode.sh "this is my test string"
# => U2FsdGVkX18fjSHGEzTXU08q+GG2I4xrV+GGtfDLg+T3vxpllUc/IHnRWLgoUl9q

decode example

./decode.sh U2FsdGVkX18fjSHGEzTXU08q+GG2I4xrV+GGtfDLg+T3vxpllUc/IHnRWLgoUl9q
# => this is my test string

Answer 2

openssl can do it better.

encode:

$ secret=$(echo "this is a secret." | openssl enc -e -des3 -base64 -pass pass:mypasswd -pbkdf2)

decode:

$ echo "${secret}" | openssl enc -d -des3 -base64 -pass pass:mypasswd -pbkdf2

tips:

• you can remove arg -pass and intput password according to the prompt.