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rage(1) General Commands Manual rage(1)

NAME

rage - A simple, secure, and modern encryption tool

SYNOPSIS

rage [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [--max-work-factor] [-o|--output] [-e|--encrypt] [-r|--recipient] [-R|--recipients-file] [-p|--passphrase] [-a|--armor] [-d|--decrypt] [-i|--identity] [-j ] [INPUT]

DESCRIPTION

rage encrypts or decrypts INPUT to OUTPUT. The INPUT argument is optional and defaults to standard input. Only a single INPUT file may be specified. If -o/--output is not specified, OUTPUT defaults to standard output.

If -p/--passphrase is specified, the file is encrypted with a passphrase requested interactively. Otherwise, it's encrypted to one or more RECIPIENTS specified with -r/--recipient or -R/--recipients-file. Every recipient can decrypt the file.

In -d/--decrypt mode, passphrase-encrypted files are detected automatically and the passphrase is requested interactively. Otherwise, one or more IDENTITIES specified with -i/--identity are used to decrypt the file.

age encrypted files are binary and not malleable, with around 200 bytes of overhead per recipient, plus 16 bytes every 64KiB of plaintext.

OPTIONS

Print this help message and exit.
Print version info and exit.
Maximum work factor to allow for passphrase decryption.
Write encrypted or decrypted file to OUTPUT instead of standard output. If OUTPUT already exists it will be overwritten.

If encrypting without -a/--armor, rage will refuse to output binary to a TTY. This can be forced by specifying "-" as OUTPUT.

Encrypt INPUT to OUTPUT. This is the default.
Encrypt to the explicitly specified RECIPIENT. See the RECIPIENTS AND IDENTITIES section for possible recipient formats.

This option can be repeated and combined with other recipient flags, and the file can be decrypted by all provided recipients independently.

Encrypt to the RECIPIENTS listed in the file at PATH, one per line. Empty lines and lines starting with "#" are ignored as comments.

If PATH is "-", the recipients are read from standard input. In this case, the INPUT argument must be specified.

This option can be repeated and combined with other recipient flags, and the file can be decrypted by all provided recipients independently.

Encrypt with a passphrase, requested interactively from the terminal. rage will offer to auto-generate a secure passphrase.

This option can't be used with other recipient flags.

Encrypt to an ASCII-only "armored" encoding.

age armor is a strict version of PEM with type "AGE ENCRYPTED FILE", canonical "strict" Base64, no headers, and no support for leading and trailing extra data.

Decryption transparently detects and decodes ASCII armoring.

Decrypt INPUT to OUTPUT.

If INPUT is passphrase encrypted, it will be automatically detected and the passphrase will be requested interactively. Otherwise, the IDENTITIES specified with -i/--identity are used.

ASCII armoring is transparently detected and decoded.

Decrypt using the IDENTITIES at IDENTITY.

IDENTITY may be one of the following:

a. A file listing IDENTITIES one per line. Empty lines and lines starting with "#" are ignored as comments.

b. A passphrase encrypted age file, containing IDENTITIES one per line like above. The passphrase is requested interactively. Note that passphrase-protected identity files are not necessary for most use cases, where access to the encrypted identity file implies access to the whole system.

c. An SSH private key file, in PKCS#1, PKCS#8, or OpenSSH format. If the private key is password-protected, the password is requested interactively only if the SSH identity matches the file. See the SSH keys section for more information, including supported key types.

d. "-", causing one of the options above to be read from standard input. In this case, the INPUT argument must be specified.

This option can be repeated. Identities are tried in the order in which are provided, and the first one matching one of the file's recipients is used. Unused identities are ignored, but it is an error if the INPUT file is passphrase-encrypted and -i/--identity is specified.

Decrypt using the data-less plugin PLUGIN-NAME.

This is equivalent to using -i/--identity with a file that contains a single plugin IDENTITY that encodes no plugin-specific data.

[INPUT]
Path to a file to read from.

RECIPIENTS AND IDENTITIES

RECIPIENTS are public values, like a public key, that a file can be encrypted to. IDENTITIES are private values, like a private key, that allow decrypting a file encrypted to the corresponding RECIPIENT.

Native X25519 keys

Native age key pairs are generated with rage-keygen(1), and provide small encodings and strong encryption based on X25519. They are the recommended recipient type for most applications.

A RECIPIENT encoding begins with "age1" and looks like the following:


age1gde3ncmahlqd9gg50tanl99r960llztrhfapnmx853s4tjum03uqfssgdh

An IDENTITY encoding begins with "AGE-SECRET-KEY-1" and looks like the following:


AGE-SECRET-KEY-1KTYK6RVLN5TAPE7VF6FQQSKZ9HWWCDSKUGXXNUQDWZ7XXT5YK5LSF3UTKQ

An encrypted file can't be linked to the native recipient it's encrypted to without access to the corresponding identity.

SSH keys

As a convenience feature, rage also supports encrypting to RSA or Ed25519 ssh(1) keys. RSA keys must be at least 2048 bits. This feature employs more complex cryptography, and should only be used when a native key is not available for the recipient. Note that SSH keys might not be protected long-term by the recipient, since they are revokable when used only for authentication.

A RECIPIENT encoding is an SSH public key in "authorized_keys" format (see the "AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT" section of sshd(8)), starting with "ssh-rsa" or "ssh-ed25519", like the following:


ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABgQDULTit0KUehbi[...]GU4BtElAbzh8=
ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIH9pO5pz22JZEas[...]l1uZc31FGYMXa

The comment at the end of the line, if present, is ignored.

In recipient files passed to -R/--recipients-file, unsupported but valid SSH public keys are ignored with a warning, to facilitate using "authorized_keys" or GitHub ".keys" files. (See EXAMPLES.)

An IDENTITY is an SSH private key file passed individually to -i/--identity. Note that keys held on hardware tokens such as YubiKeys or accessed via ssh-agent(1) are not supported.

An encrypted file can be linked to the SSH public key it was encrypted to. This is so that rage can identify the correct SSH private key before requesting its password, if any.

Plugins

rage can be extended through plugins. A plugin is only loaded if a corresponding RECIPIENT or IDENTITY is specified. (Simply decrypting a file encrypted with a plugin will not cause it to load, for security reasons among others.)

A RECIPIENT for a plugin named "example" starts with "age1example1", while an IDENTITY starts with "AGE-PLUGIN-EXAMPLE-1". They both encode arbitrary plugin-specific data, and are generated by the plugin.

When either is specified, rage searches for age-plugin-example in the PATH and executes it to perform the file header encryption or decryption. The plugin may request input from the user through rage to complete the operation.

Plugins can be freely mixed with other plugins or natively supported keys.

A plugin is not bound to only encrypt or decrypt files meant for or generated by the plugin. For example, a plugin can be used to decrypt files encrypted to a native X25519 RECIPIENT or even with a passphrase. Similarly, a plugin can encrypt a file such that it can be decrypted without the use of any plugin.

Plugins for which the IDENTITY/RECIPIENT distinction doesn't make sense (such as a symmetric encryption plugin) may generate only an IDENTITY and instruct the user to perform encryption with the -e/--encrypt and -i/--identity flags. Plugins for which the concept of separate identities doesn't make sense (such as a password-encryption plugin) may instruct the user to use the -j flag.

EXAMPLES


$ rage-keygen -o key.txt
Public key: age1ql3z7hjy54pw3hyww5ayyfg7zqgvc7w3j2elw8zmrj2kg5sfn9aqmcac8p

$ tar cvz ~/data | rage -r age1ql3z7hjy54pw3hyww5ayyfg7zqgvc7w3j2elw8zmrj2kg5sfn9aqmcac8p > data.tar.gz.age

$ rage -d -o data.tar.gz -i key.txt data.tar.gz.age


$ rage -o example.jpg.age -r age1ql3z7hjy54pw3hyww5ayyfg7zqgvc7w3j2elw8zmrj2kg5sfn9aqmcac8p \
-r age1lggyhqrw2nlhcxprm67z43rta597azn8gknawjehu9d9dl0jq3yqqvfafg example.jpg


$ cat > recipients.txt
# Alice
age1ql3z7hjy54pw3hyww5ayyfg7zqgvc7w3j2elw8zmrj2kg5sfn9aqmcac8p
# Bob
age1lggyhqrw2nlhcxprm67z43rta597azn8gknawjehu9d9dl0jq3yqqvfafg

$ rage -R recipients.txt example.jpg > example.jpg.age


$ rage -p secrets.txt > secrets.txt.age
Using an autogenerated passphrase:
release-response-step-brand-wrap-ankle-pair-unusual-sword-train

$ rage -d secrets.txt.age > secrets.txt
Type passphrase:


$ rage -p <(rage-keygen) > key.age
Public key: age1yhm4gctwfmrpz87tdslm550wrx6m79y9f2hdzt0lndjnehwj0ukqrjpyx5
Using an autogenerated passphrase:
hip-roast-boring-snake-mention-east-wasp-honey-input-actress

$ rage -r age1yhm4gctwfmrpz87tdslm550wrx6m79y9f2hdzt0lndjnehwj0ukqrjpyx5 secrets.txt > secrets.txt.age

$ rage -d -i key.age secrets.txt.age > secrets.txt
Type passphrase:


$ rage -R ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub example.jpg > example.jpg.age

$ rage -d -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 example.jpg.age > example.jpg


$ age-plugin-yubikey
# Run interactive setup, generate identity file and obtain recipient.

$ rage -r age1yubikey1qwt50d05nh5vutpdzmlg5wn80xq5negm4uj9ghv0snvdd3yysf5yw3rhl3t secrets.txt > secrets.txt.age

$ rage -d -i age-yubikey-identity-388178f3.txt secrets.txt.age


$ curl https://github.com/benjojo.keys | rage -R - example.jpg > example.jpg.age

SEE ALSO

rage-keygen(1), rage-mount(1)

VERSION

v0.10.0

AUTHORS

Jack Grigg <thestr4d@gmail.com>

rage 0.10.0