Install aescrypt with Homebrew, Nix, winget

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• aescrypt
• aesget

Project history

The project belongs to the early AES transition period. The official page says Eric Lee Green wrote AESCrypt, and Randy Kaelber modified it to use Rijndael rather than Twofish while adding larger key sizes.

The homepage is also a time capsule of early-2000s open-source cryptography distribution: SourceForge hosting, source tarballs, a companion Ruby implementation, and a visible export-control reminder from December 2000. The page was last modified on 2002-09-17, leaving the tool with a deliberately stable, small surface area.

Adoption history

AESCrypt was explicitly framed as a component for scripts, not as a full encryption product. The homepage says keychain management, public-key signatures, and larger policy concerns are expected to happen outside the program, which made the tool easy to compose in shell workflows.

The page also warns that applications built from open-source encryption components had their own export-control responsibilities. That notice is useful adoption context: AESCrypt was expected to be used inside larger applications or scripted systems, not only run by hand.

How it is used

The documented commands are aescrypt -k keyfile [-s 128|192|256] and aesget -k keyfile [-s 128|192|256]. The program encrypts or decrypts stdin, uses /dev/urandom to create a salt, prepends the salt while encrypting, and strips it while decrypting.

The key-file format is intentionally simple: a line beginning with kk= followed by hex key data. The homepage also documents reading the hex-coded key from stdin when the key file is -, while warning that this mode is less forgiving about exact key length.

Why package nerds care

AESCrypt is package-nerd archaeology: a compact AES-era Unix filter with SourceForge hosting, script-first ergonomics, and a design that avoids becoming a full key-management system.

It is useful to know because package repositories often preserve compatibility tools for old shell workflows even when newer designs steer users toward age, GnuPG, OpenSSL, or platform-native encrypted storage.

Timeline

• 2000-11-03: The homepage source records the page creation date.
• 2000-12-15: The homepage records an export-control reminder for users of open-source encryption components.
• 2002-09-17: The official homepage records its last-modified date.

Related projects

• Related projects and concepts include Rijndael/AES, Twofish, the companion aes-rb Ruby module, random-device salt generation, and script-level encryption filters.

Sources

• https://aescrypt.sourceforge.net/