CCGUESS(1)

💖 CCGUESS(1) 💖

ok so this is the manual page for ccguess, living in section 1 (user commands) of the Encryption manual set. she's a little key-hunting tool and she's about to become your bestie 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

ccguess — search for ccrypt encryption keys 🔑

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ccguess [options] file...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the vibe. ccguess is out here trying to guess ccrypt(1) encryption keys by searching the relevant part of the key space. how? it asks you for an approximate key, then tries a whole bunch of variations on it. the whole point is helping ccrypt girlies recover keys they mistyped or straight-up forgot — as long as they remember at least part of the key. no cap 💅

now bestie, let's be real: ccrypt has strong cryptographic security. there are no special back doors, no shortcuts, no secret cheat codes for recovering forgotten keys. so ccguess does not have any special powers. she's just out here trying different keys until a possible match shows up. that's it. that's the whole thing. 😭

searching the entire key space is usually not a practical option, so instead ccguess prompts you for an approximate key and tries all the variations you can get by applying a small number of changes. and what counts as a change? every change is one of these four:

• a deletion of one letter
• an insertion of one letter
• a replacement of one letter by another
• a transposition of two adjacent letters

by default, ccguess searches all keys that differ from the approximate key by up to 5 changes. you can adjust how many changes get searched with the --depth option.

the way ccguess decides whether a key is a "possible match" is the same mechanism ccrypt uses to reject non-matching decryption keys. and there's a small chance of a false match — like, ccguess might find a key that turns out not to be the true encryption key and doesn't actually decrypt the file correctly 🙈. a false match happens approximately once for every 4.3 billion keywords tried, so the longer your search goes on, the higher the likelihood that a false match is found. normally ccguess stops after the first possible match is found, but the -c option lets you search for additional keys. you can reduce the possibility of a false match even further by supplying multiple files that were encrypted with the same key. in that case, ccguess will search for keys that match any of the files, but will print a warning for keys that do not match all of the files. 👑

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

the following options are supported:

• -h, --help — help. print usage information and exit. the "wait what do i do" button 🎀
• -L, --license — print license info and exit. legal girlie moment 📜
• -V, --version — print version info and exit. ✨
• -K key, --key key — specify the approximate key on the command line, rather than prompting the user for it. no awkward prompt, just vibes.
• -d n, --depth n — search keys that contain up to n changes. the default is 5.
• -c, --continue — keep trying more keys even after the first match is found. by default, ccguess will stop after the first key is found that matches all input files. (she's persistent, she's committed, she's giving main character energy 🔥)
• -t chars, --chartable chars — specify the list of characters to try for replacements and insertions. by default, ccguess will try all printable ASCII characters. if you know, for example, that your key only used lowercase letters and numbers, you can speed up the search by specifying a list of characters explicitly. this option is mutually exclusive with -n.
• -n, --non-printable — allow non-printable characters in keys. by default, ccguess will only try printable ASCII characters. note that the use of this option slows down the search significantly. this option is mutually exclusive with -t.

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🍓 ARGUMENTS 🍓

• file — the name of a file that has been encrypted with the unknown key. this file is only read from, not written to (she would never ✋). the special filename - is used to denote standard input.

if multiple files are specified, ccguess will search for keys that match any of the files, but will print a warning for keys that do not match all of the files.

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

suppose the file myfile.cpt has been encrypted with the key "gardenhouse", but the user remembers "gardenhose". the command

ccguess -K gardenhose myfile.cpt

will find the correct key after 2318 guesses. and honestly? slay. 💖

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⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

the exit status is 0 if at least one possible match is found, 1 if no matches are found, and >=2 if an error occurred.

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👑 VERSION 👑

1.11

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🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

Peter Selinger <selinger at users.sourceforge.net>

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright (C) 2000-2018 Peter Selinger

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. See also http://www.gnu.org/.

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and that's the whole page bestie, hope it ate 🫶 this was Version 1.11, dated July 2018, and yes she really does just say CCGUESS(1) at the bottom like that. iconic. bye 💅✨