Encrypt files in the shell with v02enc
Conclusions
Niehage's v02enc proves that good ideas do not necessarily have to come from corporations and do not always take years to successfully implement. Based on his experience with Shared-Secrets, Niehage has designed v02enc to easily encrypt and decrypt secrets for sharing via the command line and for saving in source code directories. The ability to encrypt a file for access by several users in parallel greatly facilitates the work of teams.
Admittedly, you could create a comparable feature set using Ansible Vault. However, Ansible Vault cannot compete with v02enc in terms of leanness; it also requires significantly more overhead to make it work. Conversely, v02enc can be easily distributed to any system that needs it, as can the keys of the users who will use it. Tools such as vim02enc and seamless integration with the Git and Mercurial diff views, as well as Keychain integration on macOS round out the package. If you are looking for a lean alternative to Ansible Vault, you will definitely want to take a closer look at v02enc.
Infos
- "Linux Shadow Password HOWTO" by Michael H. Jackson, The Linux Documentation Project, 1996 (PDF): https://tldp.org/HOWTO/pdf/Shadow-Password-HOWTO.pdf
- Shared-Secrets: https://github.com/yahesh/shared-secrets
- Shared-Secrets online service: https://secrets.nhg.name
- age encryption: https://github.com/FiloSottile/age
- v02enc source code: https://github.com/yahesh/v02enc
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