secure-string-cipher 1.0.11

A secure AES-GCM encryption utility with user-friendly features

secure-string-cipher

A simple, secure AES-256-GCM encryption tool with an interactive menu interface.

Requirements: Python 3.10+

Features

• Encrypt and decrypt text and files with AES-256-GCM
• Generate strong random passphrases with entropy calculation
• Store passphrases in an encrypted vault (optional)
• Stream large files in chunks for low memory usage
• Text output in Base64 for easy copy/paste
• Clipboard integration available

Installation

# Recommended: install with pipx
pipx install secure-string-cipher

# Or with pip
pip install secure-string-cipher

# Or from source
git clone https://github.com/TheRedTower/secure-string-cipher.git
cd secure-string-cipher
pip install .

Usage

Run the interactive CLI:

cipher-start

You'll see this menu:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃                    ⚡ AVAILABLE OPERATIONS ⚡                     ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃                                                                  ┃
┃  📝  TEXT & FILE ENCRYPTION                                      ┃
┃                                                                  ┃
┃    [1] Encrypt Text     →  Encrypt a message (base64 output)    ┃
┃    [2] Decrypt Text     →  Decrypt an encrypted message         ┃
┃    [3] Encrypt File     →  Encrypt a file (creates .enc)        ┃
┃    [4] Decrypt File     →  Decrypt an encrypted file            ┃
┃                                                                  ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃  🔑  PASSPHRASE VAULT (Optional)                                ┃
┃                                                                  ┃
┃    [5] Generate Passphrase  →  Create secure random password    ┃
┃    [6] Store in Vault       →  Save passphrase securely         ┃
┃    [7] Retrieve from Vault  →  Get stored passphrase            ┃
┃    [8] List Vault Entries   →  View all stored labels           ┃
┃    [9] Manage Vault         →  Update or delete entries         ┃
┃                                                                  ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃    [0] Exit               →  Quit application                   ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Choose an option and follow the prompts.

Docker

Use the pre-built image:

# Pull and run
docker pull ghcr.io/theredtower/secure-string-cipher:latest
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/theredtower/secure-string-cipher:latest

# Or with docker-compose
git clone https://github.com/TheRedTower/secure-string-cipher.git
cd secure-string-cipher
docker-compose run --rm cipher

To encrypt files in your current directory:

docker run --rm -it \
  -v "$PWD:/data" \
  ghcr.io/theredtower/secure-string-cipher:latest

With persistent passphrase vault:

docker run --rm -it \
  -v "$PWD:/data" \
  -v cipher-vault:/home/cipheruser/.secure-cipher \
  ghcr.io/theredtower/secure-string-cipher:latest

Image details: 78MB Alpine-based image, runs as non-root user, no critical vulnerabilities.

Security

• Encryption: AES-256-GCM with authenticated encryption
• Key derivation: PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 (390,000 iterations)
• Passphrase vault: Encrypted with AES-256-GCM using your master password
• File permissions: Vault files are user-only (chmod 600)
• Password requirements: Minimum 12 characters with complexity checks

Development

Quick Start

# Clone and install with dev dependencies
git clone https://github.com/TheRedTower/secure-string-cipher.git
cd secure-string-cipher
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Format code before committing
make format

# Run the full test suite
make ci

Available Commands

make format      # Auto-format code with Ruff
make lint        # Check formatting, types, and code quality
make test        # Run test suite
make test-cov    # Run tests with coverage report
make clean       # Remove temporary files
make ci          # Run complete CI pipeline locally

Tools

• Ruff – Fast linter and formatter (replaces Black, isort, flake8)
• mypy – Static type checking
• pytest – Testing framework with 150+ tests

Run make format before pushing, then make ci to verify everything passes.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.