Compare to FiloSottile/age

[ysmood]

Whisper supports signing, Age doesn't.

Whisper supports ssh-agent like passphrase caching, Age doesn't.

Whisper is designed to reuse existing ssh keys, so you don't have to generate one, Age is not.

Whisper supports more key types, such as ecdsa, Age doesn't, check link.

Whisper supports auto key selection, so when decryption you don't need to know which private key to use, with Age you have to manually find out which private key to use if you have multiple private keys in the ~/.ssh folder.

The output of whisper's wire format overhead is much less, here are the output to encrypt "hello world!" with ed25519.

Whisper:

$ echo 'hello world!' | whisper -b -e <(echo 'ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIGnIDWJ8b6HTan92Hwz7MGNA0HNVR1fUHEqG21NLj55+')

BwABAaIQk0oAAQFAh1mlWoRBlu6VxgbERcOx9vnFfi2K49ZbvfuBxSJ0kvDVuZ4a
JjTvVXveAp2jcwBhFZ/WDzL4QrQZ0Xq9E2ngmfmXPdXt2KTvUVO1qxGaO6OBJ+PI
zIk9t/+e0NMh1s+S

To decrypt the above

echo 'BwABAaIQk0oAAQFAh1mlWoRBlu6VxgbERcOx9vnFfi2K49ZbvfuBxSJ0kvDVuZ4a
JjTvVXveAp2jcwBhFZ/WDzL4QrQZ0Xq9E2ngmfmXPdXt2KTvUVO1qxGaO6OBJ+PI
zIk9t/+e0NMh1s+S' | whisper -b -p <(echo '
-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----
b3BlbnNzaC1rZXktdjEAAAAABG5vbmUAAAAEbm9uZQAAAAAAAAABAAAAMwAAAAtzc2gtZW
QyNTUxOQAAACBpyA1ifG+h02p/dh8M+zBjQNBzVUdX1BxKhttTS4+efgAAAJgrU2soK1Nr
KAAAAAtzc2gtZWQyNTUxOQAAACBpyA1ifG+h02p/dh8M+zBjQNBzVUdX1BxKhttTS4+efg
AAAEC5DiJcfgI0FZtJkqdGqOrAQfMrx7Adc+Al/zGS8G/342nIDWJ8b6HTan92Hwz7MGNA
0HNVR1fUHEqG21NLj55+AAAAEHlhZEB5YWQtcGMubG9jYWwBAgMEBQ==
-----END OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----')

Age:

$ echo 'hello world!' | age -a -R <(echo 'ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIGnIDWJ8b6HTan92Hwz7MGNA0HNVR1fUHEqG21NLj55+')

-----BEGIN AGE ENCRYPTED FILE-----
YWdlLWVuY3J5cHRpb24ub3JnL3YxCi0+IHNzaC1lZDI1NTE5IFROcUpBdyB5VDM5
eFZ3Vk1rZ2dZSVo4YmxIdTY5MlArQ0NBbzVQY3VhNmFuU0RBZGdFClNydUlsS0RK
eGRxT2pEMDBzTmpWN092azJRSkFiTitzNm1YSHE2MEJmd00KLS0tIDBHVHNXUEdv
SWtvdnBsTHBEeUMyNGljVXRxem1HNFBhdUpJcE02MlVwd3MK8qd1Z2Ww5XmR7kzs
xAINqozfRjkQv4LUCG7nVkfu2nSSxUtodPDZUxb1Oidw
-----END AGE ENCRYPTED FILE-----