22 May 2002 chromatic   » (Master)

Hiding Behind the Bill of Rights:

brencrypt.pl encrypts any file. It creates a self-extracting archive that requires a very special key in another file -- the text of the Bill of Rights.

"Self-extracting", in this case, means that you must have a recent Perl and my Crypt::CipherSaber module installed. (In fact, you ought to have the most recent, though unreleased, version, to avoid a silly warning.) To encrypt, pass the name of the file to run and the name of the output file. To decrypt a file, pass the name of the key file and, optionally, the name of the decrypted output file. You can also redirect STDOUT, if you're exceptionally daring.

There are a couple of limitations. First, the aforementioned module patch would be nice, but it's not ready. (In debugging, I found some inflexible bits in the module that should be fixed). Second, I'm not positive it writes binary files correctly. The most fatal flaw is that you need the exact text of the Bill of Rights I used, right down to the formatting. I'll fix this flaw first.

I'd point to the text I used, but that would be a circumvention device. Oh wait, did the first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America just become illegal? Oops.

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