Encrypting the shell scripts

Sometimes we need to encrypt a shell script for security reasons, for example if the script contains some sensitive information like password etc.
For this task I am going to use the shc tool (http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/sources/shc.html) to convert my text shell script file into a binary file . Download the source code of shc tool from the link http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/sources/ and extract the GZIP compressed tar archive file. Here I am going to use the 3.8.9 version.
Note: I used Ubuntu 14.04 for this example.
If make is not installed, then install make
# apt-get install make
Go inside the shc-3.8.9 source folder.
# cd shc-3.8.9
# make


Now install shc
#make install

If installation fails with directory not found error, create the /usr/local/man/man1 directory and run the command again.

#mkdir /usr/local/man/man1
# make install

Remove the shc source folder after it is installed
# cd ..
# rm -rf shc-3.8.9/
Our shc tool is installed, we are now going to convert our shell script into binary.
Go to the folder where the shell script is stored. My script name is mysql_backup.
Create binary file of the shell script using the following command:
# shc -f mysql_backup
shc command creates 2 additional files
# ls -l mysql_backup*
-rwxrw-r-- 1 pranab pranab 149 Mar 27 01:09 mysql_backup
-rwx-wx--x 1 pranab pranab 11752 Mar 27 01:12 mysql_backup.x
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pranab pranab 10174 Mar 27 01:12 mysql_backup.x.c
 
mysql_backup is the original unencrypted shell script.
mysql_backup.x is the encrypted shell script in binary format.
mysql_backup.c is the C source code of the mysql_backup file. This C source code is compiled to create the above encrypted mysql_backup.x file.
We will remove the original shell script (mysql_backup) and c file (mysql_backup.x.c) and rename the binary file (mysql_backup.x) into the shell script (mysql_backup).
# rm -f  mysql_backup.x.c
# rm -f mysql_backup
# mv mysql_backup.x mysql_backup
 
Now we have our binary shell script, the contents of this file can not be easily seen as it is a binary file.