After extensive searching I found only two examples of using openssl
ciphers; both on this list. (The “OpenSSL for Ruby” home page is, IMHO,
nearly worthless as a source of info.) The lack of available documentation
for Ruby and related projects is very frustrating; even ruby-doc.org wasn’t
much help. But, I’m still here 
One of the two examples I found works, the other does not (using Ruby
v1.8.0):
~~~~~ script start ~~~~~
require ‘openssl’
myText = 'myTestString’
myKey = ‘myPassword’
cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher::Cipher.new(“DES”)
cipher.encrypt( myKey )
result = cipher.update( myText )
result << cipher.final
puts “Encrypted “#{myText}” with “#{myKey}” to:\n”#{result}"\n"
cipher.decrypt( myKey )
result2 = cipher.update( result )
result2 << cipher.final
puts “Decrypted “#{result}” with “#{myKey}” to:\n”#{result2}"\n\n"
~~~~~ script end ~~~~~
produces:
···
Encrypted "myTestString" with "myPassword" to:
"ä{
1ÿ¯¿É8e[ú¯"
Decrypted "ä{
1ÿ¯¿É8e[ú¯" with "myPassword" to:
"myTestString"
while:
~~~~~ script start ~~~~~
require ‘openssl’
myText = 'myTestString’
myKey = ‘myPassword’
cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher::Cipher.new(“DES”)
cipher.key = myKey
cipher.encrypt(myText)
result = cipher.final
puts “Encrypted “#{myText}” with “#{myKey}” to:\n”#{result}"\n"
cipher.decrypt( result )
result2 = cipher.final
puts “Decrypted “#{result}” with “#{myKey}” to:\n”#{result2}"\n\n"
~~~~~ script end ~~~~~
produces:
Encrypted "myTestString" with "myPassword" to:
"7kCvDäï"
../cryptest.rb:14:in `final': wrong final block length (OpenSSL::CipherError)
from ./cryptest.rb:14
The above leads me to two questions:
-
Could and would someone please tell me why one works and the other does
not? Or at least point me to a reference doc so that I can figure it out
for myself? -
Could and would someone please tell me what ciphers, other than DES, are
available with the “OpenSSL for Ruby” project? Or at least point me to a
reference doc? [The ChangeLog says all openssl ciphers have been added,
and according to the openssl-0.9.7a README, Blowfish should be available,
but attempting to initialize ‘cipher’ with #.new(“Blowfish”) produced
"Unsupported cipher algorithm (Blowfish)"; trying #.new(“BLOWFISH”)
produces “Unsupported cipher algorithm (BLOWFISH)”; and, oh look at that
"blowfish" works … uhhh … sort of …] -
Using Blowfish, the second script is still problematic changing its
error to:
../cryptest.rb:7:in `key=': key length too short: (OpenSSL::CipherError)
from ./cryptest.rb:7
This brings me back to question #1.
TIA,
Terry
