BASh AES encryption for string of text

[NegativeSpace]

I am trying to figure out how to encrypt a string of text in BASh by inputting plain text (in English) and a key string. There are plenty of ways and instructions out there on how to encrypt and decrypt files from the command line but I do not want to use files. I know there are more elgant solutions for AES encryption of text but I have found that using GUI software is much too slow and involved for my needs most of the time. So what is the secret to inputting a couple sentences, inputting a key string, and getting the AES encrypted version of the text in the print?

I can't believe I am not able to find any instructions for this after 30 minutes of searching google! It seems to me like a lot of people would want to know how to do this.

[no42]

Two programs come to my mind:

• aespipe
• aesutil

Demo of aesutil:

$ /opt/local/bin/aes -e -b -s "Encrypted me" -p password
hq6kK1M5d5x45DCF7pmELXUzW3ARHV9A/zJcTw==
$ /opt/local/bin/aes -d -b -s "hq6kK1M5d5x45DCF7pmELXUzW3ARHV9A/zJcTw==" -p password
Encrypted me
$ 

flags:

-e encrypt

-d decrypt

-b base64 encode/decode (otherwise you get non-printable chars)

-s this_string (blank for stdin)

-p the encryption/decryption password

Edited March 2, 2013 by midnitesnake

[NegativeSpace]

Two programs come to my mind:

• aespipe
• aesutil

Demo of aesutil:

$ /opt/local/bin/aes -e -b -s "Encrypted me" -p password
hq6kK1M5d5x45DCF7pmELXUzW3ARHV9A/zJcTw==
$ /opt/local/bin/aes -d -b -s "hq6kK1M5d5x45DCF7pmELXUzW3ARHV9A/zJcTw==" -p password
Encrypted me
$ 

I checked out aespipe but it doesn't seem to support encryption of text directly input into the command line but, rather, only supports encrypting files and some other options. I haven't heard of aesutil. That seems to be much closer to what I need. I will try that out, if I can understand the man pages that is. I'm still not very efficient with the CLI but hopefully I can figure it out and make it work.

[logicalconfusion]

seems like you'd have to write a script to load every time you open a CLI and then parse the "text directly input" to AES cmd utilities.

[digip]

I know they have things built into a lot of systems like md5sum, so there might be an already built tool for what you want to do the same thing with other cryptography or cat a file to a text document with password, into a crypted file etc and vice versa.