rtty-soda 0.3.8

A CLI tool for Unix-like environments to encrypt a RTTY session using NaCl

rtty-soda

A CLI tool for Unix-like environments to encrypt a RTTY session using NaCl.

Features

• Public Key encryption (Curve25519-XSalsa20-Poly1305)
• Secret Key encryption (XSalsa20-Poly1305)
• Key derivation (Argon2id-Blake2b)
• Text compression (brotli, zstd, zlib, bz2, lzma)
• Custom encodings:
  • Base26 (Latin)
  • Base31 (Cyrillic)
  • Base36 (Latin with numbers)
  • Base64 (RFC 4648)
  • Base94 (ASCII printable)
  • Binary

Installation

Package manager

1. Install uv
2. Install rtty-soda:

   % uv tool install "rtty-soda[cli]"
   

3. Remove rtty-soda:

   % uv tool uninstall rtty-soda
   

Docker

% docker run -it --rm -h rtty-soda -v .:/app/host nett/rtty-soda:0.3.8
% docker run -it --rm -h rtty-soda -v .:/app/host nett/rtty-soda:0.3.8-tools

Getting help

All commands have [-h | --help] option.

% soda
Usage: soda [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --version   Show the version and exit.
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  decrypt-password (dp)  Decrypt Message (Password).
  decrypt-public (d)     Decrypt Message (Public).
  decrypt-secret (ds)    Decrypt Message (Secret).
  encode                 Encode File.
  encrypt-password (ep)  Encrypt Message (Password).
  encrypt-public (e)     Encrypt Message (Public).
  encrypt-secret (es)    Encrypt Message (Secret).
  genkey                 Generate Private Key.
  kdf                    Key Derivation Function.
  pubkey                 Get Public Key.

Some commands have aliases, so % soda encrypt-password ... and % soda ep ... are equivalent.

Public Key encryption

Key generation

% soda genkey | tee alice | soda pubkey - | tee alice_pub
vIvNpFgG54XCI9wBhx+ttgF9W4PXDpJC0IeUY0oiilo=

% soda genkey | tee bob | soda pubkey - | tee bob_pub
3Zqm1I1c9Oi7Vc8zcfC2cnF0ViRwhGwAfDK8SrB4f28=

% soda genkey -h
Usage: soda genkey [OPTIONS]

  Generate Private Key.

  Encoding: base26 | base31 | base36 | base64 | base94 | binary

Options:
  -e, --encoding TEXT     [default: base64]
  -o, --output-file FILE  Write output to file.
  --group-len INTEGER     [default: 0]
  --line-len INTEGER      [default: 80]
  --padding INTEGER       [default: 0]
  -v, --verbose           Show verbose output.
  -h, --help              Show this message and exit.

Encryption

Alice sends the message to Bob:

% cat message
A telegraph key is a specialized electrical switch used by a trained operator to
transmit text messages in Morse code in a telegraphy system.
The first telegraph key was invented by Alfred Vail, an associate of Samuel Morse.
(c) Wikipedia

% soda encrypt-public alice bob_pub message | tee encrypted | cut -c 1-80
XCo7tFf0fjnKALbnYTi1FZGNlwM60Jgvwmv2fLjKZEOn6U5asMB46VNXDlKbh5jtJFUxudq2mb3MfgYV

% soda encrypt-public -h
Usage: soda encrypt-public [OPTIONS] PRIVATE_KEY_FILE PUBLIC_KEY_FILE
                           MESSAGE_FILE

  Encrypt Message (Public).

  Encoding: base26 | base31 | base36 | base64 | base94 | binary

  Compression: brotli | zstd | zlib | bz2 | lzma | raw

Options:
  -t, --text                Treat message as text (binary if not specified).
  --key-encoding TEXT       [default: base64]
  -e, --data-encoding TEXT  [default: base64]
  -c, --compression TEXT    [default: brotli]
  -o, --output-file FILE    Write output to file.
  --group-len INTEGER       [default: 0]
  --line-len INTEGER        [default: 80]
  --padding INTEGER         [default: 0]
  -v, --verbose             Show verbose output.
  -h, --help                Show this message and exit.

Decryption

% soda decrypt-public bob alice_pub encrypted
A telegraph key is a specialized electrical switch used by a trained operator to
transmit text messages in Morse code in a telegraphy system.
The first telegraph key was invented by Alfred Vail, an associate of Samuel Morse.
(c) Wikipedia

Secret Key encryption

Alice and Bob share a key for symmetric encryption:

% soda genkey > shared
% soda encrypt-secret shared message -o encrypted
% soda decrypt-secret shared encrypted -o message

Another day, they share a password:

% echo qwerty | soda encrypt-password - message -p interactive -o encrypted
% echo qwerty | soda decrypt-password - encrypted -p interactive -o message

Key derivation

The KDF function derives the key from the password. It accepts different profiles: interactive, moderate, and sensitive.

% echo qwerty | soda kdf - -p interactive
HqbvUXflAG+no3YS9njezZ3leyr8IwERAyeNoG2l41U=

% soda kdf -h
Usage: soda kdf [OPTIONS] PASSWORD_FILE

  Key Derivation Function.

  Encoding: base26 | base31 | base36 | base64 | base94 | binary

  Profile: interactive | moderate | sensitive

Options:
  -e, --encoding TEXT     [default: base64]
  -p, --profile TEXT      [default: sensitive]
  -o, --output-file FILE  Write output to file.
  --group-len INTEGER     [default: 0]
  --line-len INTEGER      [default: 80]
  --padding INTEGER       [default: 0]
  -v, --verbose           Show verbose output.
  -h, --help              Show this message and exit.

Text compression

That works as follows:

1. The plaintext is prepared:
   • In binary mode (default), the message is read as bytes
   • In text mode (-t, --text), the message is read as a string, stripped, and encoded with SCSU, reducing the size of Unicode messages by 15–50%
2. The plaintext is compressed with the compression lib
3. The 16-byte MAC and 24-byte nonce are added
4. The result is encoded with Base64, which adds ~33% overhead

% soda es shared message -t -v -c brotli > /dev/null
Plaintext: 238
Ciphertext: 216
Overhead: 0.908
Groups: 1
% soda es shared message -t -v -c zstd > /dev/null
Plaintext: 238
Ciphertext: 276
Overhead: 1.160
Groups: 1
% soda es shared message -t -v -c zlib > /dev/null
Plaintext: 238
Ciphertext: 280
Overhead: 1.176
Groups: 1
% soda es shared message -t -v -c bz2 > /dev/null
Plaintext: 238
Ciphertext: 336
Overhead: 1.412
Groups: 1
% soda es shared message -t -v -c lzma > /dev/null
Plaintext: 238
Ciphertext: 320
Overhead: 1.345
Groups: 1
% soda es shared message -t -v -c raw > /dev/null
Plaintext: 238
Ciphertext: 372
Overhead: 1.563
Groups: 1

Encoding

The rtty-soda supports various encodings:

% soda encrypt-public alice bob_pub message --data-encoding base36 --group-len 5 --text
1CF5T OXYFQ 2VGTE 3CCWO S36TX SZXV8 MSXDB JEBMS FZ0AC WZBD5 ZJ4AX FAON4 NYKOM
U9MYD 0ZRJP SWHJH P7H4B CBSC1 M9Z2K VYSD3 JJW5R 9TVLF OANVZ 0O7AQ G2KS7 6W3HB
GBU85 AKR5E XLS8K 7GMXT E6NH1 UQM53 BFEZ0 RB86O P6W0M CSVYO NXRMA JM5I2 O14TZ
CPIU1 LHZSL X8B0U ZUDNJ 6EDF9 74OYS 591KN AHWOK 31MY3 6UK8V EGO

Environment variables

Common options can be set in the environment variables:

% cat ~/.soda/bin.env
SODA_TEXT=0
SODA_KEY_ENCODING=binary
SODA_DATA_ENCODING=binary
SODA_COMPRESSION=brotli
SODA_KDF_PROFILE=sensitive
SODA_GROUP_LEN=0
SODA_LINE_LEN=0
SODA_PADDING=0
SODA_VERBOSE=0

Alternative usage

• Password source

  % echo "A line from a book or a poem" | soda kdf - -e base94 -p interactive
  x\R9"~8Ujh^_uh:Ty<!t(ZNzK=5w^ukew~#-x!n
  

• WireGuard keyer

  % echo "A line from a book or a poem" | soda kdf - -p interactive -o privkey
  % cat privkey
  uIoBJdgaz8ZP3/n/9KzdUNvFi7DxbUQdQ9t8ujwGnMk=
  % soda pubkey privkey
  F2B674kXVcTznnRPWCVasx1miCT+yUtXQ3P5Ecee4zI=
  % cat privkey | wg pubkey
  F2B674kXVcTznnRPWCVasx1miCT+yUtXQ3P5Ecee4zI=
  

Compatibility

During the initial development (versions prior to 1.0.0), I can break backwards compatibility.

Releases

This project follows a rolling release cycle. Each version bump represents where I completed a full test cycle. When testing passes successfully, I commit and release - so every release is a verified stable point.