Linux Candy: No More Secrets – data decryption effects

Who loves eye candy? Don’t be shy — you can raise both hands! Both feet too if you’re sufficiently pliant.

Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open-source software in this series.

No More Secrets (nms) is a command line tool that recreates the famous data decryption effect seen in the 1992 thriller film Sneakers. It’s free and open source software.

Installation

We tested the software on Ubuntu. On a fresh installation of Ubuntu, you’ll need a few packages: git, make, gcc. You’ll probably have these software packages already installed. If not, run the command:

$ sudo apt install git make gcc

Clone the project’s GitHub repository with the command:

$ git clone https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets.git

Change into the newly created directory:

$ cd no-more-secrets

Compile nms and sneakers with the commands:

$ make nms
$ make sneakers

These commands will create the programs nms and sneakers in the ./bin directory. If you want to install them on your system with their manual pages:

$ sudo make install

This performs the following commands:

install -d /usr/local/share/man/man6
install -m644 nms.6 sneakers.6 /usr/local/share/man/man6
install -d /usr/local/bin
cd bin && install * /usr/local/bin

In Operation

Here’s a short animation showing nms in action.

nms works on piped data which can be ASCII or UTF-8 text. It applies the Hollywood effect showing encrypted data. Press a key and you’ll see a decryption sequence to reveal the original text.

The project also provides sneakers, which recreates the movie clip from the movie itself.

Summary

No More Secrets personifies our Linux Candy series.

It’s a fun little utility that aims to match the speed of the movie when decrypting the text.

If you don’t want to wait for the decryption process to start, start nms with the -a flag.

Website: github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets
Support:
Developer: Brian Barto
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

No More Secrets is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Complete list of articles in this series: