Rer: Decrypt problem on Windows

Neville Smythe neville.smythe at optusnet.com.au
Mon Dec 14 05:42:43 EST 2020


The problem is platform-symmetric. That is, a string encrypted in LC on Windows will not decrypt on the Mac. Linux will not decrypt a string encrypted on the Mac, and presumably vice-versa.

I did toy with the idea that the encryption keys might be device dependent, maybe the public and private keys created by the OpenSSL library were being stored in the OS somewhere. But no, a string encrypted on one Mac decrypts correctly on a different Mac. So my guess is that the keys are being stored by the different platform libraries within LC but not in a place known to the library for another platform.

I believe this is a bug, that is to say, it is not what is intended; surely one should be able to store an encrypted string in an LC stack, and then any user with the password should be able to decrypt it. 

A workaround is to store a different encrypted string in the standalone compiled for each platform — but to do that you need to run LC on each platform, not exactly in the spirit of LC! Or not to use SSL encryption; I would assume all of the other ciphers available in OpenSSL would behave the same way.

BTW thanks Mark for the suggestion about htppie, it does look cleaner and easier than curl. The disadvantage in my case is it would need to be installed in each user’s system.

Neville Smythe






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