dev-xero / rust-shift-cipher

A CLI tool for generating encrypted texts based on the shift (caesar) cipher algorithm, written in Rust

RUST: SHIFT CIPHER

A shift cipher (or caesar cipher) is a fundamental cryptographic algorithm based on the concept of shifting the letters in a word by a specified number of times for encryption.

Due to its uncomplicated nature, it proves particularly useful for safeguarding simple passwords and tokens.

Usage

.\main -en password 8 -e

Three arguments must be supplied to the program in order for it to work,

1. Whether to encrypt or decrypt the text (-en, -de),
2. The text, you want to encrypt, and
3. The shift distance (positive)

The last argument, -e is optional, when set, the program will write the result of a successful encryption to a plain text file named: decryption_key_[encrypted text]-[shift distance].txt stored in a directory called "encrypted". Which contains the encrypted text and the negative shift distance to decrypt the text.

The flag is ignored when -de is used.

Example

Assume we have some password we want to encrypt, as a result of our clever thinking, we come up with password (don't ever use "password" as a password, at least without encrypting it), applying the shift cipher algorithm to it using a shift distance of 8, we get:

• Original: p a s s w o r d
• Encrypted (shift distance: 8): x i a a e w z l