New Package: ccrypt-1.7.1-1: A utility for encrypting and decrypting files

New Package: ccrypt-1.7.1-1: A utility for encrypting and decrypting files

[Andreas Seidl]

The package "ccrypt" is now available with the Cygwin distribution.

Canonical homepage:
   http://quasar.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~selinger/ccrypt/

Canonical download:
   http://quasar.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~selinger/ccrypt/download/


DESCRIPTION:
============

ccrypt is a utility for encrypting and decrypting files and
streams. It was designed as a replacement for the standard unix crypt
utility, which is notorious for using a very weak encryption
algorithm. ccrypt is based on the Rijndael cipher, which is the
U.S. government's chosen candidate for the Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES, see http://www.nist.gov/aes/). This cipher is believed
to provide very strong security.

Unlike unix crypt, the algorithm provided by ccrypt is not symmetric,
i.e., one must specify whether to encrypt or decrypt. The most common
way to invoke ccrypt is via the commands ccencrypt and
ccdecrypt. There is also a ccat command for decrypting a file directly
to the terminal, thus reducing the likelihood of leaving temporary
plaintext files around. In addition, there is a compatibility mode for
decrypting legacy unix crypt files. An emacs mode is also supplied for
editing encrypted text files.


GETTING STARTED QUICKLY:
========================

1. Install ccrypt
-----------------

To update your installation, click on the "Install Cygwin now" link on
the http://cygwin.com/ web page.  This downloads setup.exe to your
system.  Once you've downloaded setup.exe, run it and select "Utils"
and then click on the appropriate fields until the above
announced version number appears if it is not displayed already.

2. Modify your .emacs file
--------------------------

Add to your .emacs file in your home directory the following two lines:

(setq load-path (cons "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp" load-path))
(require 'jka-compr-ccrypt "jka-compr-ccrypt.el")

Then, if you open an encrypted file, emacs will ask for a password. The
first time you want to save the buffer, emacs will ask again twice, but
for later savings in this session the password will be remembered.

3. Test it
----------

At the command prompt:

   cd /tmp
   echo "here goes some test" > testfile.txt
   ccencrypt testfile.txt

this gives your a file testfile.txt.cpt. You can now either edit it with
emacs, or decrypt it with ccdecrypt again.

Andreas Seidl
--
http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/~seidl