This page describes the command line tools for encryption and decryption. Enc is used for various block and stream ciphers using keys based on passwords or explicitly provided. It can also be used for Base64 encoding or decoding.

1. Openssl Generate Aes 256 Key Base64
2. Openssl Generate Aes 256 Key Size

This will result in the decrypted random key we encrypted the file in. Decrypt the large file with the random key. Once you have the random key, you can decrypt the encrypted file with the decrypted key: openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in largefile.pdf.enc -out largefile.pdf -pass file./bin.key This will result in the decrypted large file. The command I'm using to generate the key is: $ openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -k secret -P -md sha1 salt=E2EE3D7072F8AAF4 key.

• 4Examples
  • 4.2Encryption

Synopsis[edit]

The basic usage is to specify a ciphername and various options describing the actual task.

You can obtain an incomplete help message by using an invalid option, eg. -help.

Cipher alogorithms[edit]

To get a list of available ciphers you can use the list -cipher-algorithms command

The output gives you a list of ciphers with its variations in key size and mode of operation. For example AES-256-CBC for AES with key size 256 bits in CBC-mode. Some ciphers also have short names, for example the one just mentioned is also known as aes256. These names are case insensitive. In addition none is a valid ciphername. This algorithms does nothing at all.

Options[edit]

The list of options is rather long.

-in filename

This specifies the input file.

-out filename

This specifies the output file. It will be created or overwritten if it already exists.

-e or -d

This specifies whether to encrypt (-e) or to decrypt (-d). Encryption is the default. Of course you have to get all the other options right in order for it to function properly. In particular it is necessary to give the correct cipher-name as well as -a, -A or -z options.

-a, -A, -base64

These flags tell OpenSSL to apply Base64-encoding before or after the cryptographic operation. The -a and -base64 are equivalent. If you want to decode a base64 file it is necessary to use the -d option. By default the encoded file has a line break every 64 characters. To suppress this you can use in addition to -base64 the -A flag. This will produce a file with no line breaks at all. You can use these flags just for encoding Base64 without any ciphers involved.

-bufsize n

Specify the buffer size. This concerns only internal buffers. It has nothing to do with the cryptographic algorithms in question.

-debug

Enable debugging output. This does not include any sensitive information. See also -P.

-engine id

Specify an engine for example to use special hardware.

-iv IV

This specifies the initialization vectorIV as hexadecimal number. If not explicitly given it will be derived from the password. See key derivation for details.

-k password, -kfile filename

Both option are used to specify a password or a file containing the password which is used for key derivation. However they are deprecated. You should use the -pass option instead. The equivalents are -pass pass:password and -pass file:filename respectively.

-K key

This option allows you to set the key used for encryption or decryption. This is the key directly used by the cipher algorithm. If no key is given OpenSSL will derive it from a password. This process is described in PKCS5#5 (RFC-2898).

-md messagedigest

This specifies the message digest which is used for key derivation. It can take one of the values md2, md5, sha or sha1.

-nopad

This disables standard padding.

-salt, -nosalt, -S salt

These options allow to switch salting on or off. With -Ssalt it is possible to explicitly give its value (in hexadecimal).

-p, -P

Additionally to any encryption tasks, this prints the key, initialization vector and salt value (if used). If -P is used just these values are printed, no encryption will take place.

-pass arg

This specifies the password source. Possible values for arg are pass:password or file:filename, where password is your password and filename file containing the password.

-z

Use this flag to enable zlib-compression. After a file is encrypted (and maybe base64 encoded) it will be compressed via zlib. Vice versa while decrypting, zlib will be applied first.

Examples[edit]

Base64 Encoding[edit]

To encode a file text.plain you can use

To decode a file the the decrypt option (-d) has to be used

Encryption[edit]

Basic Usage[edit]

The most basic way to encrypt a file is this

It will encrypt the file some.secret using the AES-cipher in CBC-mode. The result will be Base64 encoded and written to some.secret.enc. OpenSSL will ask for password which is used to derive a key as well the initialization vector.Since encryption is the default, it is not necessary to use the -e option.

Use a given Key[edit]

It also possible to specify the key directly. For most modes of operations (i.e. all non-ECB modes) it is then necessary to specify an initialization vector. Usually it is derived together with the key form a password. And as there is no password, also all salting options are obsolete.

The key and the IV are given in hex. Their length depending on the cipher and key size in question.

The key above is one of 16 weak DES keys. It should not be used in practice.

The openssl program provides a rich variety of commands, each of which often has a wealth of options and arguments. Many commands use an external configuration file for some or all of their arguments and have a -config option to specify that file. The environment variable OPENSSL_CONF can be used to specify the location of the configuration file. If the environment variable is not specified, a default file is created in the default certificate storage area called openssl.cnf. The settings in this default configuration file depend on the flags set when the version of OpenSSL being used was built.

This article is an overview of the available tools provided by openssl. For all of the details on usage and implementation, you can find the manpages which are automatically generated from the source code at the official OpenSSL project home. Likewise, the source code itself may be found on the OpenSSL project home page, as well as on the OpenSSL Github. The main OpenSSL site also includes an overview of the command-line utilities, as well as links to all of their respective documentation.

• 2Basic Tasks
  • 2.5Generating Keys Based on Elliptic Curves
    • 2.5.1Generating the Curve Parameters
• 3Commands

The entry point for the OpenSSL library is the openssl binary, usually /usr/bin/openssl on Linux. The general syntax for calling openssl is as follows:

Alternatively, you can call openssl without arguments to enter the interactive mode prompt. You may then enter commands directly, exiting with either a quit command or by issuing a termination signal with either Ctrl+C or Ctrl+D. The following is a sample interactive session in which the user invokes the prime command twice before using the quit command to terminate the session.

This section is a brief tutorial on performing the most basic tasks using OpenSSL. For a detailed explanation of the rationale behind the syntax and semantics of the commands shown here, see the section on Commands.

Getting Help[edit]

As mentioned previously, the general syntax of a command is openssl command [ command_options ] [ command_arguments ]. The help command is no different, but it does have its idiosyncrasies. To view the top-level help menu, you can call openssl as follows.

This query will print all of the available commands, like so:

Note the above output was truncated, so only the first four lines of output are shown.

A help menu for each command may be requested in two different ways. First, the same command used above may be repeated, followed by the name of the command to print help for.

The program will then display the valid options for the given command.

The second way of requesting the help menu for a particular command is by using the first option in the output shown above, namely openssl command -help. Both commands will yield the same output; the help menu displayed will be exactly the same.

For additional information on the usage of a particular command, the project manpages are a great source of information. Another excellent source of information is the project perldocs. perldoc is a utility included with most if not all Perl distributions, and it's capable of displaying documentation information in a variety of formats, one of which is as manpages. Not surprisingly, the project documentation is generated from the pod files located in the doc directory of the source code.

Getting Library Version Information[edit]

As mentioned above, the version command's help menu may be queried for additional options like so:

Using the -a option to show all version information yields the following output on my current machine:

Generating an RSA Private Key[edit]

Generating a private key can be done in a variety of different ways depending on the type of key, algorithm, bits, and other options your specific use case may require. In this example, we are generating a private key using RSA and a key size of 2048 bits.

To generate a password protected private key, the previous command may be slightly amended as follows:

The addition of the -aes256 option specifies the cipher to use to encrypt the private key file. For a list of available ciphers in the library, you can run the following command:

With your private key in hand, you can use the following command to see the key's details, such as its modulus and its constituent primes. Remember to change the name of the input file to the file name of your private key.

The above command yields the following output in my specific case. Your output will differ but should be structurally similar.

Keep in mind the above key was generated solely for pedagogical purposes; never give anyone access to your private keys.

Generating a Public Key[edit]

Having previously generated your private key, you may generate the corresponding public key using the following command.

You may once again view the key details, using a slightly different command this time.

The output for the public key will be shorter, as it carries much less information, and it will look something like this.

For more information on generating keys, see the source code documentation, located in the doc/HOWTO/keys.txt file.

Generating Keys Based on Elliptic Curves[edit]

There are essentially two steps to generating a key:

1. Generate the parameters for the specific curve you are using
2. Use those parameters to generate the key

To see the list of curves instrinsically supported by openssl, you can use the -list_curves</t> option when calling the <tt>ecparam command.

For this example I will use the prime256v1 curve, which is an X9.62/SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field.

Generating the Curve Parameters[edit]

Having selected our curve, we now call ecparam to generate our parameters file.

Printing Parameters to Standard Out[edit]

You can print the generated curve parameters to the terminal output with the following command:

Printing Parameters as C Code[edit]

Analogously, you may also output the generated curve parameters as C code. The parameters can then be loaded by calling the get_ec_group_XXX() function. To print the C code to the current terminal's output, the following command may be used:

And here are the first few lines of the corresponding output:

Generating the Key[edit]

With the curve parameters in hand, we are now free to generate the key. Just as with the [#Generating an RSA Private Key|RSA] example above, we may optionally specify a cipher algorithm with which to encrypt the private key. The call to generate the key using the elliptic curve parameters generated in the example above looks like this:

Putting it All Together[edit]

The process of generation a curve based on elliptic-curves can be streamlined by calling the genpkey command directly and specifying both the algorithm and the name of the curve to use for parameter generation. In it's simplest form, the command to generate a key based on the same curve as in the example above looks like this:

This command will result in the generated key being printed to the terminal's output.

Openssl Generate Aes 256 Key Base64

Remember that you can specify a cipher algorithm to encrypt the key with, which something you may or may not want to do, depending on your specific use case. Here is a slightly more complete example showing a key generated with a password and written to a specific output file.

Just as with the previous example, you can use the pkey command to inspect your newly-generated key.

For more details on elliptic curve cryptography or key generation, check out the manpages.

Base64 Encoding Strings[edit]

For simple string encoding, you can use 'here string' syntax with the base64 command as below. Intuitively, the -e flag specifies the action to be encoding.

Similarly, the base64 command's -d flag may be used to indicate decoding mode.

Note: base64 line length is limited to 76 characters by default in openssl (and generated with 64 characters per line).

=> NOTHING!

To be able to decode a base64 line without line feeds that exceeds the default 76 character length restriction use the -A option.

It is recommended to actually split base64 strings into multiple lines of 64 characters, however, since the -A option is buggy, particularly with its handling of long files.

Generating a File Hash[edit]

One of the most basic uses of the dgst command (short for digest) is viewing the hash of a given file. To do this, simply invoke the command with the specified digest algorithm to use. For this example, I will be hashing an arbitrary file on my system using the MD5, SHA1, and SHA384 algorithms.

For a list of the available digest algorithms, you can use the following command.

Openssl Generate Aes 256 Key Size

You can also use a similar command to see the available digest commands:

Below are three sample invocations of the md5, sha1, and sha384 digest commands using the same file as the dgst command invocation above.

File Encryption and Decryption[edit]

The following example demonstrates a simple file encryption and decryption using the enc command. The first argument is the cipher algorithm to use for encrypting the file. For this example I carefully selected the AES-256 algorithm in CBC Mode by looking up the available ciphers and picking out the first one I saw. To see the list of available ciphers, you can use the following command.

You can also use the following command:

Having selected an encryption algorithm, you must then specify whether the action you are taking is either encryption or decryption via the -e or -d flags, respectively. The -iter flag specifies the number of iterations on the password used for deriving the encryption key. A higher iteration count increases the time required to brute-force the resulting file. Using this option implies enabling use of the Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2, usually set using the -pbkdf2 flag. We then use the -salt flag to enable the use of a randomly generated salt in the key-derivation function.

Putting it all together, you can see the command to encrypt a file and the corresponding output below. Note that the passwords entered by the user are blank, just as they would usually be in a terminal session.

The analogous decryption command is as follows:

There are three different kinds of commands. These are standard commands, cipher commands, and digest commands. Calling the OpenSSL top-level help command with no arguments will result in openssl printing all available commands by group, sorted alphabetically.

Standard Commands[edit]

• Paul Heinlein. 'OpenSSL Command-Line HOWTO'. Has many quick cookbook-style recipes for doing common tasks using the 'oppenssl' command-line application.