linux - Encrypt a string using openssl command line

Question

I have a 16 byte character that I would like to encrypt using openssl into a 16 byte encrypted string.

This encrypted string ( in human readable format ) then needs to be supplied to a user who would use it, and the string would be decrypted to its original 16-byte form for comparison and authentication. Could anyone please tell me how this would be possible with openssl commandline.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Here's one way to encrypt a string with openssl on the command line (must enter password twice):

echo -n "aaaabbbbccccdddd" | openssl enc -e -aes-256-cbc -a -salt
enter aes-256-cbc encryption password:
Verifying - enter aes-256-cbc encryption password:

Here's what the output looks like:

U2FsdGVkX1/6LATntslD80T2HEIn3A0BqxarNfwbg31D2kI00dYbmBo8Mqt42PIm

Edit: To my knowledge, you can't control the number of bytes out. You can b64 or hex encode it, but that's about it. Also, if you want to save that string to a file rather than stdout, use the -out option.