Gnugpg is in many ways the champion of encryption on Linux(personal opinion).

Sometimes there is a need to do quick password based encryption. This can be achieved with ccrypt.

Ccrypt should be available on standard Debian/Ubuntu or Centos8 repository resources.

I use Debian base here, but the steps should be similar on Centos8 or equivalent.

sudo apt-get install ccrypt -y

echo “I am going to be encrypted” >> ./example.txt

ccrypt ./example.txt

At this point a password for the encryption is needed. For this example, I used: hello.

After the encryption, my file will be found as: example.txt.cpt.

If I now try to read this cpt file, there will be nothing that can be understood on the output.

To decrypt and make the file readable again: ccdecrypt ./example.txt.cpt

After decryption, the example.txt is again found as a clear text file.