Net::SS...lowfish(3)

💖 Net::SSH::Perl::Cipher::Blowfish 💖

okay so bestie, this is a page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation collection, and it's all about Net::SSH::Perl::Cipher::Blowfish, which is a wrapper for SSH Blowfish support. yes that's a lot of colons. no we don't talk about it. 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

like, here's the whole vibe in three lines:

use Net::SSH::Perl::Cipher;
my $cipher = Net::SSH::Perl::Cipher->new('Blowfish', $key);
print $cipher->encrypt($plaintext);

make a cipher, hand it your key, print the encrypted goodies. slay. 🎀

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so Net::SSH::Perl::Cipher::Blowfish is the one bringing Blowfish encryption support to Net::SSH::Perl. how? by wrapping itself around Crypt::Cipher::Blowfish, which lives inside the CryptX module. it's giving "I'm not doing the math myself, I'm the glamorous middle layer" energy and honestly? respect. 🫶

the blowfish in here is running in CBC filter mode with a key length of 32 bytes. iconic, no notes.

now, SSH1 had to be extra about its blowfish algorithm. before and after encryption/decryption, the bytes in the string get swapped around. the swapping happens four bytes at a time, and inside each one of those four-byte blocks, the bytes get reversed. so for example, the string "foobarba" turns into "boofabra". 😭

so the order of operations is: swap the bytes like that in the string before we encrypt/decrypt it, then swap the encrypted/decrypted string again when we get it back. double swap. main character behavior fr fr.

⚠️ and listen — this whole byte-swapping thing is NOT done when Blowfish is used in the SSH2 protocol. SSH2 said "we're not doing that" and we respect the boundary. 🙈

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👑 AUTHOR & COPYRIGHTS 👑

for the author, copyright, and license tea, please see the Net::SSH::Perl manpage. all the credits live over there, and they deserve their flowers. 🌷

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and that's the whole page, bestie! this lil doc came to you via perl v5.42.0, dated 2026-01-17. stay encrypted, stay iconic, and don't forget to swap your bytes (only in SSH1 though, iykyk). 💖✨🦋