[TxMt] encryption command advice for TM "journal"

[Allan Odgaard]

On Feb 26, 2005, at 15:15, Paul Nordstrom August wrote:

> What I would like is an on-the-fly encryption -- i.e. select the text 
> and run a command to encrypt it (with a pre-set password). Then I 
> could store bank data etc securely.

You can set the password as a custom shell variable for TextMate, go to 
preferences / advanced (name it e.g. TM_PASSWD). Then use this command 
to encrypt input (which you'd probably set to “selected text”) as 
AES-128:
    openssl enc -e -aes128 -base64 -pass env:TM_PASSWD

To decrypt the block again, use this command:
    openssl enc -d -aes128 -base64 -pass env:TM_PASSWD

Anyone who has access to your TextMate preferences file would be able 
to read the password. If this is sufficient security, then I'd suggest 
the above. You could also provide the password directly to the command 
using: “-pass pass:<password>”, this is less secure than the variable 
because other processes running on your machine might be able to 
intercept launch arguments.

If you need better security, you could have the command ask for the 
password (e.g. using an applescript dialog) and maybe cache it in a 
file (readable only by current user) and maybe even have that file 
removed after n minutes.