> Pardon my ignorance, but I gather from this example that I would have > to manage not only passphrases but also iv's as well? (That would add > to my work's complexity.)
An AES256 key is only 32 bytes long; an IV, only 16. Keeping track of 48 bytes to decrypt your files isn't exactly a lot. You can fit this on the back of a business card with room left over. I've done it before. Passphrase-based crypto works by converting a passphrase into a (seemingly) random series of bytes. The problem is OpenSSL's passphrase-to-bytes routine is pretty badly substandard. Specify your own key and IV. > In fact, if I could have it my way, I would use a library that does > nothing more than AES256-encrypt/decrypt (as long as I had any > confidence that it would still be maintained 5 years from now). Which language are you looking to use? C#, Java, and Python all include AES256 in the standard library and have excellent long-term support. Many other languages offer it as well. Python has some excellent PyPI packages like passlib and Crypto which can make your task much simpler. > In other words, I would love to use a single-purpose tool that is to > AES256-encryption/decryption what, for example, gzip is to > compression/decompression. OpenSSL. Look at the command line I gave you: it's used as part of a pipeline that creates a tar archive and encrypted output all in one go. > I assume that by this you mean that OpenSSL will still be around 10-15 > years from now Yes. We're getting pretty far afield from GnuPG here: please feel free to follow up off-list. Thank you! :) _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
