lightweight encryption of text file

[Steve Holden]

Carl Banks wrote:
> On Jan 8, 11:14 am, Daniel Fetchinson <fetchin... at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>> I have a plain text file which I would like to protect in a very
>> simple minded, yet for my purposes sufficient, way. I'd like to
>> encrypt/convert it into a binary file in such a way that possession of
>> a password allows anyone to convert it back into the original text
>> file while not possessing the password one would only see the
>> following with the standard linux utility 'file':
>>
>> [fetchinson at fetch ~]$ file encrypted.data
>> encrypted.data: data
>>
>> and the effort required to convert the file back to the original text
>> file without the password would be equivalent to guessing the
>> password.
> 
> 
> gpg -c simpletextfile.txt -o simpletextfile.gpg
> 
> But I guess you can't depend on users to have gpg installed so you
> have to roll out some unvetted Python tool.
> 
> 
The OP's statement of requirements would be pretty much satisfied by the
"crypt" utility. He can even run it under Cygwin on Windows if
necessary. Cryptographic sophistication (or even cryptographic security)
was not requested (and would not be provided anyway by most of the
suggested solutions).

If any real protection is required then an ad-hoc program is definitely
not the way to provide it.

regards
 Steve
-- 
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