How to encrypt and decrypt password in UNIX

#!/bin/ksh
read -p 'Enter username: ' USERNAME
echo -n 'Enter password: ' ; read PASSWORD >/dev/null

. /another/script '$USERNAME':'$PASSWORD'

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reversible encryption is same as no encryption at all
calling script with password as parameter makes password appear in process list ( ps -ef or ps auxww) for everyone else to see

What Unix flavour?
What language do you want to use?
What type of password?
What purpose?

Many different solutions unless you answer the above.

I am not sure but I think I am using HP or AIX
I want to do the encryption and decryption in UNIX
It is a password that will be passed as a parameter either to a datastage job or another shell script.
The only purpose of encrypting is to follow our company standards, it doesent matter even if the encryption is vulnerable and can be cracked easily.
I tried using the crypt function but it says crypt not found.Just basic encryption algorithm will do...
I am thinking of converting the password to ASCI, can I do that and if so then how?

Is there a function by which I can convert the password to ASCI characters and store it in a file like flat file.
Then retrive it using another script and convert it back into alphanumeric.

null encryption is encryption too for your matter

uname -a will tell you what platform you are on.

The crypt function wouldn't be suitable for your purposes as it is a one way encryption algorythmn, ie:  you can not decrypt a crypted string without using a brute force method.

If you don't really care about the security of the password, you could do use something really basic like rot13, or even something *very* basic like hex encoding, eg:

encrypt=`perl -e 'print unpack "H*","yourpassword"'`
descrpt=`perl -e 'print pack "H*","encrypted password"'`


What did you mean by "converting the password to ASCI"?  I've never heard of ASCI in the encryption context.

The crypt function would not be suitable, but some Unixen included a crypt command. The crypt command was intended for just this sort of purpose, namely to encrypt something via a pass-phrase that could later be decrypted.

openssl command line utility can do all sorts of crypto operations

%openssl base64 -e
password
cGFzc3dvcmQK
%openssl base64 -d
cGFzc3dvcmQK
password

same with other ciphers, just like "man openssl" says

I am on AIX.
I am just wondering if a character string can be converted to its ASCII value...I know it sounds a little stupid....but it is just a thought
Since this is the first time I am working on unix I am trying to think of the easiest way to solve my problem.
If possible can you give me the exact code that I can just copy paste in vi editor and then run it.
If it is much easier to store the password in a file and then encrypt the file..then that will work too..
I really appreciate all your responses.....

you want to store username too

in shell you can use grep to retrieve username/password pairs....

openssl needs to be installed from linux application cd of your AIX CD set.

I dont have to store the username.
The only criteria is that the password has to be stored in a file in an encrypted format.
Then run another script to get the password,decrypt it, store it in a variable, and pass the variable as a parameter to a datastage job.
I can't install openss since i am connecting to a remote server, and I wont be given permission to install anything on that server.
Thats why I want to know if there is a simle algorithm that i can use for encryption and decryption.

Does the remote have Perl?

yes

Is there a way I can write this code in my shell script usint the vi editor?

You can always use vi editor to create/edit text files (shell script is text file!).