Q: How do I encrypt my bash shell script on Linux environment? The shell script contains password, and I don’t want others who have execute access to view the shell script and get the password. Is there a way to encrypt my shell script?
A: First, as a best practice you should not be encrypting your shell script. You should really document your shell script properly so that anybody who views it understands exactly what it does. If it contains sensitive information like password, you should figure out a different approach to write the shell script without having to encrypt it.
That being said, if you still insist on encrypting a shell script, you can use SHC utility as explained below. Please note that encrypted shell script created by shc is not readable by normal users. However someone who understands how this works can extract the original shell script from the encrypted binary created by shc.
SHC stands for shell script compiler.
1. Download shc and install it
Download shc and install it as shown below.
# wget http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/sources/shc-3.8.7.tgz # tar xvfz shc-3.8.7.tgz # cd shc-3.8.7 # make
Verify that shc is installed properly.
$ ./shc -v shc parse(-f): No source file specified shc Usage: shc [-e date] [-m addr] [-i iopt] [-x cmnd] [-l lopt] [-rvDTCAh] -f script
2. Create a Sample Shell Script
Create a sample bash shell script that you like to encrypt using shc for testing purpose.
For testing purpose, let us create the following random.sh shell script which generates random numbers. You have to specify how many random numbers you like to generate.
$ vi random.sh #!/bin/bash echo -n "How many random numbers do you want to generate? " read max for (( start = 1; start <= $max; start++ )) do echo -e $RANDOM done $ ./random.sh How many random numbers do you want to generate? 3 24682 1678 491
3. Encrypt the Shell Script Using shc
Encrypt the random.sh shell scripting using shc as shown below.
$ ./shc -f random.sh
This will create the following two files:
$ ls -l random.sh* -rwxrw-r--. 1 ramesh ramesh 149 Mar 27 01:09 random.sh -rwx-wx--x. 1 ramesh ramesh 11752 Mar 27 01:12 random.sh.x -rw-rw-r--. 1 ramesh ramesh 10174 Mar 27 01:12 random.sh.x.c
- random.sh is the original unencrypted shell script
- random.sh.x is the encrypted shell script in binary format
- random.sh.x.c is the C source code of the random.sh file. This C source code is compiled to create the above encrypted random.sh.x file. The whole logic behind the shc is to convert the random.sh shell script to random.sh.x.c C program (and of course compile that to generate the random.sh.x executable)
$ file random.sh random.sh: Bourne-Again shell script text executable $ file random.sh.x random.sh.x: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped $ file random.sh.x.c random.sh.x.c: ASCII C program text
4. Execute the Encrypted Shell Script
Now, let us execute the encrypted shell script to make sure it works as expected.
$ ./random.sh.x How many random numbers do you want to generate? 3 7489 10494 29627
Please note that the binary itself is still dependent on the shell (the first line provided in the random.sh. i.e /bin/bash) to be available to execute the script.
5. Specifying Expiration Date for Your Shell Script
Using shc you can also specify an expiration date. i.e After this expiration date when somebody tries to execute the shell script, they'll get an error message.
Let us say that you don't want anybody to execute the random.sh.x after 31-Dec-2011 (I used last year date for testing purpose).
Create a new encrypted shell script using "shc -e" option to specify expiration date. The expiration date is specified in the dd/mm/yyyy format.
$ ./shc -e 31/12/2011 -f random.sh
In this example, if someone tries to execute the random.sh.x, after 31-Dec-2011, they'll get a default expiration message as shown below.
$ ./random.sh.x ./random.sh.x: has expired! Please contact your provider
If you like to specify your own custom expiration message, use -m option (along with -e option as shown below).
$ ./shc -e 31/12/2011 -m "Contact admin@thegeekstuff.com for new version of this script" -f random.sh $ ./random.sh.x ./random.sh.x: has expired! Contact admin@thegeekstuff.com for new version of this script
6. Create Redistributable Encrypted Shell Scripts
Apart from -e, and -m (for expiration), you can also use the following options:
- -r will relax security to create a redistributable binary that executes on other systems that runs the same operating system as the one on which it was compiled.
- -T will allow the created binary files to be traceable using programs like strace, ltrace, etc.
- -v is for verbose
Typically you might want to use both -r and -T option to craete a redistributable and tracable shell encrypted shell script as shown below.
$ ./shc -v -r -T -f random.sh shc shll=bash shc [-i]=-c shc [-x]=exec '%s' "$@" shc [-l]= shc opts= shc: cc random.sh.x.c -o random.sh.x shc: strip random.sh.x shc: chmod go-r random.sh.x $ ./random.sh.x How many random numbers do you want to generate? 3 28954 1410 15234
Finally, it is worth repeating again: You should not be encrypting your shell script in the first place. But, if you decided to encrypt your shell script using shc, please remember that a smart person can still generate the original shell script from the encrypted binary that was created by shc.
My name is Ramesh Natarajan. I will be posting instruction guides, how-to, troubleshooting tips and tricks on Linux, database, hardware, security and web. My focus is to write articles that will either teach you or help you resolve a problem. Read more about
Comments on this entry are closed.
very nice…its helped me a lot.thanks a ton
Ramesh,
Enjoy your articles and short summaries.
This tool encodes, it does not encrypt. It converts to binary and provides some nice features that make it
more secure. Encryption would require a key. I suppose you could say that if you don’t have the shc tool you couldn’t decode the file, making it “encrypted”, but that is a very weak cipher that could be broken quite possibly with nothing more than the strings command, at least for the plain text component.
It’s misleading to believe that compilation provides some level of security. The author of this tool uses the term encoding and encryption interchangeably. But this is not encryption, this is compiling. While that does afford some level of privacy for a password, using strings you’d likely see a password and any data passed as it would be encoded as plain ASCII. I use strings on microsoft executable files and attachments to look for strings of text that point to dll’s or registry entries… spotted a lot of viruses that way.
Have you tried using strings on the encoded file? It would be interesting to see what is shown. I’m not
going to download the tool to try it.
So, this is a merely a compiler, converting the plain ASCII of the shell script to binary.
NAME shc – Generic shell script compiler
A truly encrypted file would not be executable without another step or a key. It might be possible using PGP or some combination of ssh and file permissions, sudo, sticky bits or any other convoluted method to provide true security. The use of expect with DBA files and FTP presents the same kind of challenges. Have come up with a number of ways of masking this info.
But even though the author of the tool uses the term encryption, it is not.
thanx,
john
I am always suspicious when a 3rd party tool needs root privileges to run properly.
On early Ubuntu distribution (for example), to use shc without root privileges you need to use the -T argument. (Try the following to see if you need the -T switch: $ strace strace -p $$)
Since Ubuntu 10.10, PTRACE_ATTACH is not allowed against arbitrary
matching-uid processes. The traced “child” must be a descendant
of the tracer or must have called prctl(2) using PR_SET_PTRACER,
with the pid of the tracer (or one of its ancestors). For more
details, see :
– mn ptrace
– /etc/sysctl.d/10-ptrace.conf
– https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/Roadmap/KernelHardening#ptrace
– http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1872947.html
Also, not sure if it’s a realy safe way to encrypt scripts. (But its better than nothing)
cf.:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8256
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=327263
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=508109
Thx for your post!
Regards,
– Sylvain
Hi Ramesh
Thanks a lot…
i used SHC for many years and very useful utility
After encrypting can i get rid of the .sh file? What if i want to make chnages to the script again, can i decrypt from .sh.x or .sh.x.c? If i pass on these encrypted files to some one else for execution can they decrypt these files and look into the contents?
HI Sir,
Thanks we have been using SHC for years and found it , very useful.
Karthik.P.R
MySQL DBA
Summary:
SHC is a cool geeky tool, but it doesn’t address what I feel are the root causes – a failure to separate code from configuration and a myopic view of security.
Details:
Ramesh – nice article and you’re definitely pointing folks in the right direction but I see a deeper issue here (you alluded to it but didn’t address it head-on).
As I see it, when developers (whether system administrators or not) want to hard-code things (like passwords for example), they’re writing code that’s hard to maintain and typically much less secure / flexible over the long term.
Passwords are just one of many things that programs need to access as part of the programs’ configuration. Rather than storing configuration details directly in a program, it’s often much more maintainable to store configuration in a configuration-specific area like a config.ini or similar file. This makes it a lot easier to a) find, and b) change without risking breaking the executable code (whether shell script or binary executable), c) should help remind the developer that the values need to be checked before being used, and d) avoids re-building a system each time the configuration changes. After all – we do this for executable programs – why can’t we do the same for scripts?
The other item to consider – when storing sensitive data in a file system (or other persistence layer / store), administrators need to consider how safe the store is from prying eyes. If a store is broken into, it helps to know where all the passwords are stored so those passwords can be changed easily. It is also a good idea to change passwords from time to time even if a store hasn’t been broken into as a policy. This helps protect the administrator from over-exposure in the event the store is broken into but the administrator hasn’t detected it yet.
If the password being stored is not being used to get into something but to allow access to something, most programs will store a secure hash of a password or better yet, store a hash of a password per-authorized-user. Often, access requirements are not just user and password combinations but may also include a source IP or range of addresses as well as a potential secure key that is changed out from time to time as well. Bonus points if access is specific to the user’s needs (like user a can SELECT, user b can SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and user c has administrative access).
KB
hi just i have encrypted with key my shell script by SHC utility nice tool . bt i want to know how to decrypt the encrypted shell script.please let me know anyone knows this …thanks in advance
regards,
eshwar
I am getting some junk charector as a output after running the converted binary of the source shell script.
Hi,
Thanks a lot, this applications is very useful (on my Linux machine), but I have problems to use shc in Mac OS. Not works, I compiled this one and ejecute the binary file generated but only resive this error:
-bash: ./myapplication.sh.x: cannot execute binary file
My OS is MAC OS X Lion.
Can you help me, please?
Thanks!!
After i encrypted it my script did not working. Is it shc still available to use?
[root@my shc-3.8.7]# ./op.sh.x
[8]+ Stopped ./op.sh.x
bash-2.04$ gcc aaa.sh.x.c
bash-2.04$ ./a.out
HI,
While i am encryted the script. Same will be given below error. In first statement (db2 connect to manis) is successfull but in 2nd statement (db2 “select count(1) from amnish.test” ) given below error after establishing the connection successfully.
Database Connection Information
Database server = DB2/AIX64 9.5.9
SQL authorization ID = MANISH
Local database alias = MANISH
SQL1024N A database connection does not exist. SQLSTATE=08003
Please help me to resolve the issue
@Syafeuq
try to compile programe with shc -v -r -T -f /op.sh
it will probably solve the problem
Hi,
Thanks for your great article 🙂
thanks…
warning! shc will not protect your sourcecode!
After executing the “protected script” run:
ps aux | grep “name of shc compiled script”
You will notice it uses a single process to execute the entire contents of your script and it is now displayed in it’s entirety in your shell window. You can then simply find and replace ^J with \n and ^I with \t and you have the full formatted source code.
Therefore any shc ‘compiled script’ can be reversed to original complete source code in seconds… It is utterly pointless and I really wish people would stop suggesting it as an obfuscation technique, it gives authors a false sense of security because at a glance the *file* it compiles appears to be very secure. No obfuscation technique is irreversible but the point is to at least make it complex enough that it becomes more effort than it is worth to a would be code thief.
shc however, can be reversed in seconds as I have just described above.
Hi, Thanks for this post. Btw, Is this also applicable in UNIX format? Thanks
when encryption done it works but after some hours it not work sometimes says expired or sometimes weird out
just used sic -v -f script.sh in terminal
any help
Obviously not a big deal but in step 1 the following:
tar xvfz shc-3.8.7.tgz
should actually be:
tar -xvzf shc-3.8.7.tgz
or any derivation thereof provided that the f comes last as tar looks for the name of the file to extract after the f switch. Nit-picky to be sure but I just thought I’d point it out.
wget http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/sources/shc-3.8.9.tgz
tar xzvf shc-3.8.9.tgz
cd shc-3.8.9
tar xzvf shc-3.8.9.tgz
v3.8.7 is nolonger available.
wget does not seem to work but browser download does.
Only if the -T switch is used to compile, does the executable produced run in debian squeeze (i386) in an OpenVZ container.
When using with expect script i can see password of “encrypted” script
via ps -ef
Hi.
I don’t know if this is the right place where I can ask about shc and his functionalities but I have a question about this product. If this is not the right place where can I ask for my problem?
The bug related to the script size limitation and _SC_ARG_MAX. I get this error when I do a ‘make test’. However after a ‘make’ the program is compile successfully (and the program shc is created). There is a method to solve this bug?
Thanks in advance and sorry if this is not the right place to ask of the shc program.
While running ./test.sh.x i am getting below error
[2]+ Stopped ./test.sh.x
Two questions
1. first is when I run make, it gives me
——————
*** ?Do you want to probe shc with a test script?
*** Please try… make test
——————
and when I run make test, some error occurs. When there should be .sh file in my PATH?
——————
*** Running a compiled test script!
*** It must show files with substring “sh” in your PATH…
./match.x sh
make: *** [make_the_test] Killed: 9
——————
2. another question is that
does this supports mac system? I though unix based mac os x should be working fine with shc, but after I run shc, the generated file (.x) just give me kill -9 as output.
not sure what is wrong
Hi,
I am unable to execute converted script on CentOS 6
shc -rv -f ../script-api-add-device.sh
shc shll=sh
shc [-i]=-c
shc [-x]=exec ‘%s’ “$@”
shc [-l]=
shc opts=
shc: cc ../script-api-add-device.sh.x.c -o ../script-api-add-device.sh.x
shc: strip ../script-api-add-device.sh.x
shc: chmod go-r ../script-api-add-device.sh.x
[root@localhost shc-3.8.9]# cd ..
[root@localhost etc]# ./script-api-add-device.sh.x
[20]+ Stopped ./script-api-add-device.sh.x
[root@localhost etc]# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Nov 22 03:15:09 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
i encrypted my file but i have problem
“test.sh” its my file name //original code
test.sh.x // the encrypted shell script in binary format
test.sh.x.c
how can i set encrypted file to original code (test.sh.x to test.sh)
please help me fast
./mach.x
works fine
/bin/sh ./match.x
fails cannot execute binary file
usually when called via screen or php
ive used this years ago dont recall this being a problem is it new?
[root@localhost mnt]# ./abc.sh
hi
[root@localhost mnt]# shc -f abc.sh
[root@localhost mnt]# ls
abc.sh abc.sh.x abc.sh.x.c shc-3.8.9 shc-3.8.9.tgz
[root@localhost mnt]# ./abc.sh.x
[1]+ Stopped ./abc.sh.x
[root@localhost mnt]# killall -9 abc.sh.x
[1]+ Killed ./abc.sh.x
[root@localhost mnt]#
hi
i am getting the above error while running the encrypted scriptkindly help me
Get an error:
[2] + stopped ./dnsfull.sh.x
Hi this is very nice !
but i have a problem. thats is:
root@static [~]# ./tool.sh
[1]+ Stopped ./tool.sh
root@static [~]# ./tool.sh
[2]+ Stopped ./tool.sh
root@static [~]# ./tool.sh
[3]+ Stopped ./tool.sh
i don’t know what i do, please help me
thanks
Friends,
I see many of you getting [x] Stopped message while executing the *.x script.
This indicates, your script was passed for a while in background, similar to pressing “Ctrl+z”. This would result the same when you execute script.
to make it run in “foreground” again, just run the below command you would see the script executes as defined and you will get the desired o/p,
# fg <>
where <> is the number you see in [x] stopped message. 🙂
eg:
# fg 1
Cheers!
NSP
This is for those who has encountered the + Stopped issue.
When you run the actual script, no issue at all.
When you run the encrypted script, there is a [1]+ Stopped which means it is passing the script to be run as a background (similar to when you press [CTRL+Z].
You need to enter ‘fg’ twice in order to continue with the script.
The solution that I have is that you should compile the script with the ‘-T’ parameters.
Instead of compiling with # ./shc -r -f test.bash
Use this instead # ./shc -r -T -f test.bash
Cheers,
JFK
i often encountered “[x]+ Stopped”.
but i found a significant difference among shc version.
3.8.9b distribued on Francisco’s web site: often
3.9.2 distributed on github: never
according to “CHANGE”, 3.8.9b works as daemon.
Walker, I have the same issues as you.
The encrypted file results in “Killed: 9”
my bash script ‘s binary not working!
$ ./sudo-gdb.x
./sudo-gdb.x: Operation not permitted
Killed
$ sudo-gdb
GNU gdb (Ubuntu 7.11-0ubuntu1) 7.11
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type “show copying”
and “show warranty” for details.
This GDB was configured as “x86_64-linux-gnu”.
Type “show configuration” for configuration details.
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
.
Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at:
.
For help, type “help”.
Type “apropos word” to search for commands related to “word”.
(gdb)
Hello,
Thx for article, it’s fine.
I’ve try this :
fct.sh
#!/bin/bash
function hello() {
echo “hello “$1
}
main.sh
#!/bin/bash
. ./fct.sh
hello John
This not work because the file fct.sh is an executable …
I’ve try with export -f hello too, but not working.
Someone can help me ?
Thx a lot 🙂
Regards
I need help. When I tray to install with make a error occurs :
# make
cc -Wall shc.c -o shc
make: cc: No se encontro el programa
make: *** [shc] Error 127
The message is in spanish. I don’t understan I have c install in my server.