Nescient

nescient, n. (nesh-int) - from Latin ‘unknowing’, ‘hidden’

Store, encrypt and decrypt files to and from encrypted, authenticated containers.

Nescient provides an easy-to-use, secure, and efficient means of file or memory level encryption.

Several use cases include:

• Backing up multiple files to a reliable yet insecure location.

• Providing additional, file-level encryption to supplement full disk encryption, securing packed files even while the machine is on with the disk-level encryption key loaded in memory.

• Sharing files with others securely, by transferring a Nescient container through an insecure channel and providing a password through a separate secure channel.

• Using Nescient’s cryptographic classes to efficiently implement secure protocols.

Nescient is:

• open source: It is licensed under the permissive MIT license.

• multiplatform: As a Python project, Nescient works on all the major operating systems (Windows, macOS, and Linux)

• transparent: The means with which Nescient encrypts and packs files is documented, and the algorithms used are tested both against official test vectors and arbitrary data to ensure correctness.

• fast: All core crypto code is written in Cython and compiled to C extensions, making it fast enough to be practically usable for large files. The fastest cipher modes achieve speeds of 10 cycles/byte.

Nescient supports the following packing modes:

• The AES block cipher for encryption, with either 128, 192, or 256 bit keys, in CBC mode, and SHA-256 for generating authentication tags.

• The ChaCha20 stream cipher with 256 bit keys and SHA-256 for generating authentication tags.

python3 setup.py sdist
cd dist
pip install Nescient-<version>.tar.gz