# Simple secret key encryption with PyNaCl [closed]

I am playing around with PyNaCl to get a bit into cryptography atm.

Now I wrote two scripts to encrypt a file with a secret key and then decrypt it again using that key. The encryption part works fine but I am having trouble with decrypting the file again. I get the error nacl.exceptions.ValueError: The nonce must be exactly 24 bytes long when I execute decrypt.py. When I explicitly hand the nonce generated in decrypt.py to the decrypt() function I get the error nacl.exceptions.CryptoError: Decryption failed. Ciphertext failed verification

When I use the last three lines of decrypt.py in encrypt.py however, it works for some reason. But of course I don't want to instantly decrypt the file I just encrypted, instead I want to do that with a separate script at a later point.

Also, I am only using SCRYPT here because PyNaCl does not contain Argon2 in my installation for reasons unknown. I am also aware that I hardcoded the salt in a variable, this is just for testing purposes. Later I want to generate that with utils.random and write it to the encrypted file.

My scripts look as follows:

encrypt.py

from nacl import pwhash, secret, utils

infile = "test.mp4"
outfile = "out.crypt"

kdf = pwhash.kdf_scryptsalsa208sha256
salt = '\x1b\r\xbfxrL\xee\x83x\x0b\x83\x13O\x1dv\xbc\xd5\x13\x18w;G\xd6\x88 \xae\x8b\x96^\xbd4\xbc'
ops = 33554432
mem = pwhash.SCRYPT_MEMLIMIT_SENSITIVE

with open(infile, "rb") as in_file:

opslimit=ops, memlimit=mem)
secretBox = secret.SecretBox(derivatedKey)
nonce = utils.random(secret.SecretBox.NONCE_SIZE)
encrypted = secretBox.encrypt(data, nonce)

with open(outfile, "wb") as out_file:
out_file.write(encrypted)


decrypt.py

from nacl import pwhash, secret, utils

infile = "out.crypt"
outfile = "decrypted.mp4"

kdf = pwhash.kdf_scryptsalsa208sha256
salt = '\x1b\r\xbfxrL\xee\x83x\x0b\x83\x13O\x1dv\xbc\xd5\x13\x18w;G\xd6\x88 \xae\x8b\x96^\xbd4\xbc'
ops = 33554432
mem = pwhash.SCRYPT_MEMLIMIT_SENSITIVE

opslimit=ops, memlimit=mem)
box = secret.SecretBox(key)
nonce = utils.random(secret.SecretBox.NONCE_SIZE)
decrypted = box.decrypt(infile)

with open("outfile", "wb") as out_file:
out_file.write(decrypted)


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

## closed as off-topic by e-sushiAug 30 '17 at 11:55

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

• "Programming questions are off-topic even if you are writing or debugging cryptographic code. Unless your question is specifically about how the cryptographic algorithm or protocol works, you should look into asking on Stack Overflow instead." – e-sushi
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

It's not really a cryptography question, but I think the decryption would go better if you read the data from infile first (box works on strings of data, not filenames), so

with open(infile, 'r') as in_file:


and later:

decrypted = box.decrypt(encrypted)


where the nonce before it can go, as it is not used (the encrypted data contains the generated salt from encrypting).

Also the quotes on "outfile" can go. It's a variable.

• Thanks a lot! That did the trick. Sorry for choosing the wrong stackexchange. I will post on stackoverflow the next time. – Marcus Aug 31 '17 at 11:27
• @Marcus Glad I could help. stackoverflow has a cryptography tag for questions like this. – Henno Brandsma Aug 31 '17 at 21:09