How to password protect gzip files on the command line?
Solution 1
You have to apply the Unix philosophy to this task: one tool for each task.
Tarring and compression is a job for tar
and gzip
or bzip2
. Crypto is a job for either gpg
or openssl
:
Encrypt
% tar cz folder_to_encrypt | \
openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e > out.tar.gz.enc
Decrypt
% openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -in out.tar.gz.enc | tar xz
Or using gpg
% gpg --encrypt out.tar.gz
The openssl
variant uses symmetric encryption, you would have to tell the receiving party about the used 'password' (aka 'the key'). The gpg
variant uses a combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption, you use the key of the receiving party (which means that you do not have to tell any password involved to anyone) to create a session key and encrypt the content with that key.
If you go the zip (or 7z) route: essentially that is the same as the openssl
variant, you have to tell the receiving party about the password.
Solution 2
If your intent is to just password protect files, then use the hand zip utility through command line
zip -e <file_name>.zip <list_of_files>
-e asks the zip utility to encrypt the files mentioned in
Working example:
$ touch file_{0,1}.txt # creates blank files file_0 & file_1
$ zip -e file.zip file_* # ask zip to encrypt
$ ENTER PASSWORD:
$ VERIFY PASSWORD:
$ ls file*
Solution 3
Here's a few ways to do this. One thing to note is that if you're going to use separate compression and encryption tools you should always compress before encryption, since encrypted data is essentially non-compressible.
These examples compress and encrypt a file called clear_text
.
Using gpg
$ gpg -c clear_text #Compress & Encrypt
$ gpg -d clear_text.gpg #Decrypt & Decompress
gpg will compress the input file before encryption by default, -c
means to use symmetric encryption with a password. The output file will be clear_text.gpg
. One benefit of using gpg
is that is uses standard OpenPGP formats, so any encryption software that supports OpenPGP will be able to decrypt it.
Using mcrypt
$ mcrypt -z clear_text #Compress & Encrypt
$ mdecrypt -z clear_text.gz.nc #Decrypt & Decompress
The -z
option compresses. By default this outputs a file called clear_text.gz.nc
.
Using bcrypt
$ bcrypt -r clear_text #Compress & Encrypt
$ bcrypt -r clear_text.bfe #Decrypt & Decompress
bcrypt compresses before encrypting by default, the -r
option is so that the input file isn't deleted in the process. The output file is called clear_text.bfe
by default.
Using gzip
and aespipe
$ cat clear_text | gzip | aespipe > clear_text.gz.aes #Compress & Encrypt
$ cat clear_text.gz.aes | aespipe -d | gunzip > clear_text #Decrypt & Decompress
aespipe is what it sounds like, a program that takes input on stdin and outputs aes encrypted data on stdout. It doesn't support compression, so you can pipe the input through gzip first. Since the output goes to stdout you'll have to redirect it to a file with a name of your own choosing. Probably not the most effective way to do what you're asking but aespipe is a versatile tool so I thought it was worth mentioning.
Solution 4
You can use 7zip to create your password protected archive. You can specify the password on the command line (or in a script) the following way:
7z a -p<password> <someprotectedfile>.7z file1.txt file2.txt
7zip can also read from STDIN as follows:
cat <somefile> | 7z a -si -p<password> <someprotectedfile>.7z
If it's mandatory to use zip files, you might want to play around with the -t<type>
parameter (e.g. -tzip
).
Solution 5
Neither tar, gzip, nor bzip2 supports password protection. Either use a compression format that does, such as zip, or encrypt it with another tool such as GnuPG.
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morpheous
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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morpheous over 1 year
I want to create some tar.gz (and possibly tar.bz2) files, using the tar command on Ubuntu 10.04.
I want to password protect the file.
What is the command to do this (I have Googled, but found nothing that shows how to create and extract compressed files using a password).
Anyone knows how to do this?
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Admin over 3 yearsSee also this question on Ask Ubuntu for answers.
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morpheous almost 14 yearsAh, that explains why I couldn't find anything online. I think I'll go for zip.
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morpheous almost 14 yearsGah!, I'm trying to recursively zip a directory with passwors, and it only creates a zip file with the name foobar as an (empty) directory in it. Here is the command I am using: zip -e foobar.zip foobar. foobar is a non-empty folder in the current directory
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Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams almost 14 yearsJust like the man says,
-r
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ndbroadbent over 11 yearsFor anyone wondering how to decrypt the file with openssl:
openssl aes-256-cbc -d -in out.tar.gz.enc -out decrypted.tar.gz
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Keith Smiley about 10 years@nathan.f77 that command also shows how to do things without piping them into openssl.
openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e -in foo.tar.gz -out bar.tar.gz.enc
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Kristopher Ives about 10 yearsZip file encryption is not safe in any way.
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Andrew Savinykh almost 10 years@KeithSmiley if you have large archives and not a lot of space (like it could be on a VPS) it's more space-efficient to pipe.
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tscizzle almost 8 years@KristopherIves can you elaborate on the unsafeness?
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Kristopher Ives almost 8 years
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felwithe over 7 yearsI picked this as the answer because it's the only one that answers the question. The question isn't how to encrypt a message, it's how to password protect an archive. That's all I needed to do. (Gmail was blocking my server backups because it decided there was something unsafe in the attachment, and I just needed to add a password. It doesn't have to be secure.)
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eleijonmarck over 7 yearsI can't seem to run this on a mac. Is this different in anyway?
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akira over 7 years@eleijonmarck provide the part "does not work because <insert-error-message-here>"…
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Franklin Yu over 7 years@KristopherIves It requires "another ZIP-archive, containing at least one of the files from the encrypted archive in unencrypted form" to work.
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EM0 almost 7 years"You need to know only a part of the plaintext (at least 13 bytes)". This makes it much more vulnerable than if an entire unencrypted file was required (which is already pretty bad). Also, zip encryption is not resistant to brute-force attacks (e.g. with Jack the Ripper). Nobody should be using it for anything serious.
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Enno Gröper over 4 yearsDoesn't work for me between Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 machine. Error: "bad decrypt" (and warnings about deprecated key derivation and hints to user -iter or -pbkdf2). Decrypting on the same (16.04) machine works.
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akira over 4 years@EnnoGröper: i provided 2 ways to encrypt / decrypt. also: provide the used software versions if you expect anyone to solve that issue of yours.
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bartolo-otrit over 4 years@EM0 Do you mean "John the Ripper"?
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EM0 over 4 yearsYes, I meant "John the Ripper", thanks. (It took 2 years for someone to notice!)
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Aero Windwalker about 4 yearsIs it possible to set a password to encrypt or decrypt with openssl?
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Aero Windwalker about 4 years(meaning with a flag, I want to put it in a script...) never mind I figured it out, with -k flag...
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Slava Fomin II over 3 yearsI'm getting this warning:
*** WARNING : deprecated key derivation used. Using -iter or -pbkdf2 would be better.
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Kok How Teh over 2 yearsHow to open this encrypted file in Windows 11?
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perepm over 2 yearsPossibly right click -> unzip?