About

Aegis is a lightweight TUI (text user interface) encryption software using Aes-256-GCM, SM4-GCM, Twofish-EAX and XChaCha20Poly1305 as cipher for simple encryption and Argon2id for key derivation function (secure password hashing). The software was built with C++ (std=23) and cryptopp-modern: https://cryptopp-modern.com/.

Supported Ciphers

• Aes256-GCM (orginal name Rijndael): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard
• SM4-GCM (ShāngMì 4): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM4_(cipher)
• Twofish-EAX (Aes contest runner up developped by Bruce Schneier): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twofish
• XChaCha20Poly1305: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChaCha20-Poly1305

Tools and Requierments for building and debugging

• Programming Language: C++ (std=17/20/23)
• Debugger: GNU Debugger, Valgrind
• cryptopp-modern: 2026.6.0 (https://cryptopp-modern.com/)
• GNU C++ Compiler 14.2.0 or compatible
• CMake (>= 3.22 version)

Build and install on Linux (Debian, Fedora)

CMake

To build and install using cmake, type the following command in terminal. The executable file will be installed at /usr/local/bin/ directory. Create and enter a temporary build directory

$ cmake -B build -S .

Compile the executable

$ cmake --build build

Install 'aegis' straight to /usr/local/bin

$ sudo cmake --install build

To run on Linux, type the following command anywhere in terminal

$ aegis

Makefile

To build and install using cmake, type the following command in terminal. The executable file will be installed at /usr/local/bin/ directory.

$ sudo make

To run on Linux, type the following command anywhere in terminal

$ aegis

Cleaning up

CMake

$ rm -rf build/

To purge the installed binary from /usr/local/bin, run:

$ sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/aegis

Makefile

To purge the installed binary from /usr/local/bin, run:

$ sudo make clean

How to encrypt folders ?

To encrypt folder, first compress/archive the folder (.7z, .zip, .rar, .tar etc.) and then encrypt.

Acknowledgement

Aegis is free software and comes with absolutely no warranty. This software is intended for personal use and educational use only. It is not suitable for industrial/professional use.