vimdecrypt

Command line tool for decrypting vim-blowfish-encrypted files.

As of version 7.3 vim offers built in blowfish encryption/decryption. Unfortunately the resulting files can only be read back by vim, precluding batch processing or scripting. Also longevity of encrypted data is a concern if a program with the dependencies and size of vim is required to unlock it.

This project provides a very simpe vimdecrypt Python module for decrypting blowfish-encoded file objects, as well as the vimdecrypt command line tool for decrypting files to stdout.

encryption methods

Vimdecrypt supports only blowfish2 encryption. Files encrypted using either zip or blowfish should be converted using :set cm=blowfish2 prior to using this tool.

requirements

Besides Python 3, vimdecrypt requires any one of PyCryto, PyCryptoDome or blowfish to be installed.

installation

Both the Python module and the command line tool are installable via Pip:

$ pip install [--user]

This will install the blowfish module by default

usage

With ~/.local/bin in your executable path, decrypt any file to stdout using:

$ vimdecrypt [path]

If the path argument is omitted then data is read from stdin:

$ cat somefile | vimdecrypt

Note that the password is obtained via GNU getpass which does not interfere with stdin/stdout redirection.

The Python module defines only the decrypt method:

>>> import vimdecrypt
>>> with open('somefile', 'rb') as f:
>>>   text = vimdecrypt.decrypt(f)

credits

Thanks to @nlitsme for demonstrating blowfish decryption in Python. His identically named vimdecrypt project supports multiple encryption methods as well as password cracking.