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- DES 1 "24 March 1987"
-
- des - DES file encryption
- SYNOPSIS
-
- des -e|-d [-h] [-k key] [-b]
- DESCRIPTION
-
- des is a filter that encrypts or decrypts standard input to standard output
- with the Data Encryption Standard (DES).
- Either -e (encrypt) or -d (decrypt) must be specified. If the key is not
- given on the command line with the -k option the command will prompt for it
- twice, suppressing echo and comparing the two responses to guard against
- mistyping.
-
- The -h flag controls how the key string is to be interpreted.
- Without the -h flag, the key is an ASCII string.
- Since DES ignores the low order bit of each key byte, the high order bit is
- set for odd parity, thus retaining the information contained in the low
- order bit.
- If the -h flag is set, the key string is interpreted as 16 hex/ASCII
- characters; the low order bit of each byte is again ignored as per the DES
- algorithm. This allows the use of any arbitrary 56-bit key, including bytes
- representing control characters that could not be typed if the -h option were
- not used.
-
- By default, DES Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode is used, with an initial
- vector (IV) of all zeros; if the -b option is specified, Electronic Code
- Book (ECB) mode is used instead.
-
- Except for the -h option, this command is compatible with the des command on
- the Sun Microsystems workstation.
- "SEE ALSO"
- Sun Microsystems DES(1) manual page, which describes in detail how
- the length of the file is encoded in the last block of ciphertext.
- AUTHOR
- Phil Karn, KA9Q
-