[plug] Crypt/Decrypt?

[Christian]

Tamara Thompson wrote:
> 
> Hi,  does anyone remember the days of BSD and
> other flavors where crypt/decrypt was standard
> issue?
> Apparently Linux, or at least RH5.2, does not
> come with crypt/decrypt.
> I'd really like to be able to encrypt files on
> my system.  Am I missing some elegant and obvious
> solution?

If I were you I'd be asking myself why you want to encrypt your files. 
Assuming no one else knows your password and your permissions are set
correctly, there is no need.  Another assumption here is that no one
else knows your root password.  If any one of these assumptions fails
(or could fail) then you may want to use encryption.

So having decided you want to use encryption, why would you want to use
crypt?  If provides very little, if any, protection at all - I suspect
that's why it's not included in most Linux distributions.  Any
cryptographer with half a clue can crack it and any non-cryptographer
with access to numerous programs which automatically decrypt it's output
can also crack it. (the only situations where this rule *may* not apply
is for files of less than 1024 bytes, and/or compressed files and/or
multiply encrypted files with different keys).

So if you really want to encrypt your files securely (and you feel you
need to) then my suggestion is to look at something in the general
vicinity of PGP.  Of course, getting hold of the US version of PGP may
or may not be easy but there is a free (in the beer and speech senses)
equivalent called GNUPG or something.  I haven't had much experience
with any of these programs as yet so I can't really recommend anything
further.

Hope this helps,

Christian.

-- 
========================================================================
I'm not trying to give users what they want, I'm trying to give them
freedom, which they can then accept or reject. If people don't want
freedom, they may be out of luck with me, but I won't allow them to 
define for me what is right, what is worth spending my life for.
                                                    - Richard Stallman