jrnl/docs/encryption.md
Jonathan Wren 29234ddc35
Documentation updates (Thanks @guydebros!) (#1031)
* updated README.md:

- corrected information about encryption
- made additions based on proposed changes to overview.md
- made other changes for clarity and grammar

* ongoing changes to overview.md

* added note that `pycrypto` is required

made other small changes for grammar and clarity

* added new python decryption script to encryption.md

* updated encryption.md to clarify dependencies

other relatively small changes for clarity

straightened quotes

Co-authored-by: Guy B. deBros <guydebros@users.noreply.github.com>
2020-08-22 12:13:36 -07:00

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Markdown

# Encryption
## A Note on Security
While `jrnl` follows best practices, total security is never possible in the
real world. There are a number of ways that people can at least partially
compromise your `jrnl` data. See the [Privacy and Security](./security.md) page
for more information.
## Dependencies
As of version 2.0, `jrnl`'s encryption functions require
[`cryptography`](https://pypi.org/project/cryptography/), which is available in
the Python Package Index (PyPI) and can be installed using `pip`:
``` sh
pip3 install cryptography
```
Previous versions of `jrnl` require
[`pycrypto`](https://pypi.org/project/pycrypto/):
```sh
pip3 install pycrypto
```
## Encrypting and Decrypting
Existing plain text journal files can be encrypted using the `--encrypt`
command:
``` sh
jrnl --encrypt [FILENAME]
```
You can then enter a new password, and the unencrypted file will replaced with
the new encrypted file.
This command also works to change the password for a journal file that is
already encrypted. `jrnl` will prompt you for the current password and then new
password.
Conversely,
``` sh
jrnl --decrypt [FILENAME]
```
replaces the encrypted journal file with a plain text file. You can also specify
a filename, e.g., `jrnl --decrypt plain_text_copy.txt`, to leave the original
encrypted file untouched and create a new plain text file next to it.
## Storing Passwords in Your Keychain
There is no method to recover or reset your `jrnl` password. If you lose it,
your data will be inaccessible forever.
For this reason, when encrypting a journal, `jrnl` asks whether you would like
to store the password in your system's keychain. An added benefit is that you
will not need to enter the password when interacting with the journal file.
If you don't initially store the password in your keychain but decide to do so
later---or if you want to store it in one computer's keychain but not in another
computer's---you can run `jrnl --encrypt` on an encrypted journal and use the
same password again. This will trigger the keychain storage prompt.
## Manual Decryption
Should you ever want to decrypt your journal manually, you can do so with any
program that supports the AES algorithm in CBC. The key used for encryption is
the SHA-256 hash of your password. The IV (initialization vector) is stored in
the first 16 bytes of the encrypted file. The plain text is encoded in UTF-8 and
padded according to PKCS\#7 before being encrypted.
Here is a Python script that you can use to decrypt your journal:
``` python
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import base64
import getpass
from pathlib import Path
from cryptography.fernet import Fernet
from cryptography.hazmat.backends import default_backend
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import hashes
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives.kdf.pbkdf2 import PBKDF2HMAC
filepath = input("journal file path: ")
password = getpass.getpass("Password: ")
with open(Path(filepath),"rb") as f:
ciphertext = f.read()
password = password.encode("utf-8")
kdf = PBKDF2HMAC(
algorithm=hashes.SHA256(),
length=32,
salt=b"\xf2\xd5q\x0e\xc1\x8d.\xde\xdc\x8e6t\x89\x04\xce\xf8",
iterations=100_000,
backend=default_backend(),
)
key = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(kdf.derive(password))
print(Fernet(key).decrypt(ciphertext).decode('utf-8'))
```
If you're still using `jrnl` version 1.X, the following script serves the same
purpose:
``` python
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import argparse
from Crypto.Cipher import AES
import getpass
import hashlib
import sys
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("filepath", help="journal file to decrypt")
args = parser.parse_args()
pwd = getpass.getpass()
key = hashlib.sha256(pwd.encode('utf-8')).digest()
with open(args.filepath, 'rb') as f:
ciphertext = f.read()
crypto = AES.new(key, AES.MODE_CBC, ciphertext[:16])
plain = crypto.decrypt(ciphertext[16:])
plain = plain.strip(plain[-1:])
plain = plain.decode("utf-8")
print(plain)
```