Using AES Crypt on Linux

You do not need to be an expert to use AES Crypt for Linux to securely encrypt your data files. To encrypt a file, you simply enter the "aescrypt" command with the approrpiate command-line arguments.

Suppose you have a file called "picture.jpg" that you would like to encrypt using the password "apples". You would enter the following command:

aescrypt -e -p apples picture.jpg

That's it! The program will create a file with the name "picture.jpg.aes".

When you want to later decrypt the file "picture.jpg.aes", you would enter the following command:

aescrypt -d -p apples picture.jpg.aes

The program will create the file "picture.jpg", containing the contents of the original file before it was encrypted.

It can't be any simpler than that!

Of course, many Linux users create sophisticated scripts that pipe input from one program into another, and AES Crypt fully supports such usage. For example, you could backup files and encrypt them with a command like this:

tar -cvf - /home | aescrypt -e -p apples - >backup_files.tar.aes

In all of the examples above, the password is provided on the command line. Since there are certain risks associated with that kind of usage, it may be preferred to let aescrypt prompt you to enter the password. This can be accomplished simply by not including the -p parameter, like this:

aescrypt -d picture.jpg.aes

AES Crypt will prompt you for the password, but what you enter will not be displayed on the screen.

What if you want to decrpyt a file, but just want to have it displayed on the screen and not stored in a plaintext file? That's possible. To do that, just use this syntax:

aescrypt -d -o - passwords.txt.aes