Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decrypting script

Re:Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decr... by dreamlayers on Friday April 22, 2016 @12:50PM (#11550515)

I don't like the idea of needing to execute a file to decrypt it. That could be abused by someone, adding malicious code to the decryption code.

Of course you could inspect the file, but that's extra work which many people won't bother with.

I guess what's really needed is a simple encrypted format that's easy to decrypt without needing to worry about command line arguments. For example, people are generally satisfied with .tar.* formats and not looking for self extracting compressed formats.

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Re:Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decr... by vbezhenar on Friday April 22, 2016 @12:58PM (#11550593)

Thanks, that's a very reasonable suggestion. It's easy to add --decrypt option to the main tool, so it'll decrypt encrypted archive without executing anything. I'll implement it.

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Re:Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decr... by jrcii on Friday April 22, 2016 @03:36PM (#11552026)

> without needing to worry about command line arguments. For example, people are generally satisfied with .tar.

I have to google the extract arguments for tar every single time I use it. What was it again, -xfv?

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Re:Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decr... by ivanhoe on Friday April 22, 2016 @03:49PM (#11552103)

Sorry for offtopic, but I find it strange that so many people find it hard to remember, it's just: e(x)tract, be (v)erbose and use (f)ile. If it was gzipped add -z. If you're compressing the file use -c (for compress) instead of -x. To me it was one of the easier commands to memorize...

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Re:Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decr... by jagger27 on Friday April 22, 2016 @06:29PM (#11552984)

A few extra tips for tar:

-xvf is sufficient even if the archive is compressed

The dash is optional as well. tar xvf archive.tar.gz works just fine.

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Re:Show HN: Shell utility to encrypt a file into a self-decr... by brbsix on Sunday April 24, 2016 @03:21AM (#11558882)

Right near the top of `tar --help`:

    tar -xf archive.tar  # Extract all files from archive.tar.

If you work with lots of different types of archives or have a hard time remembering the various tools and arguments, I recommend dtrx (Do The Right Extraction). Super simple and it ensures you don't accidentally dump a whole directory tree somewhere it shouldn't. Assuming you have pip and hg installed, you can install the latest version to your user site with the following command:

    pip2 install --user hg+http://www.brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/dtrx

Then all you have to remember is `dtrx ARCHIVE...`

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