PostQuantum.FileEncryption.Tool 1.6.0

pqfe — file encryption and signing from the command line

Encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify files without writing a line of C#. pqfe is the official command-line frontend for PostQuantum.FileEncryption: authenticated AES-256-GCM, PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 or Argon2id passphrase derivation, atomic output files, and fail-closed decryption — a wrong passphrase and a tampered file produce the same error and emit no plaintext. Detached Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65 hybrid signatures add who produced this file on top of it wasn't altered.

dotnet tool install -g PostQuantum.FileEncryption.Tool

Requires the .NET 10 runtime or later.

Usage

pqfe encrypt secrets.db secrets.db.pqfe            # prompts for a passphrase (no echo)
pqfe decrypt secrets.db.pqfe secrets.db

For scripts and CI, read the passphrase from an environment variable instead of a prompt:

export PQFE_PASS='correct horse battery staple'
pqfe encrypt backup.tar backup.tar.pqfe --passphrase-env PQFE_PASS
pqfe decrypt backup.tar.pqfe backup.tar --passphrase-env PQFE_PASS

Sign a finished container (or any file) so recipients can prove who produced it:

pqfe keygen me.key --encrypt                       # writes me.key (passphrase-protected) + me.key.pub (share)
pqfe sign   backup.tar.pqfe me.key                 # detects the encrypted key, prompts, writes backup.tar.pqfe.sig
pqfe verify backup.tar.pqfe me.key.pub             # exit 0 = authentic, 65 = reject

Without --encrypt, keygen writes the raw private key bytes (0600 on Unix). With it, the private key is a passphrase-protected, tamper-evident PQKF key file (an Argon2id-hardened .pqfe container) — useless at rest without the passphrase. sign accepts either form.

Options

Exit codes

Follow sysexits.h conventions so failures are scriptable: 0 ok, 64 usage, 65 data error (wrong passphrase, tampered/truncated ciphertext, or a signature that does not verify — each deliberately indistinguishable within its class), 66 missing input, 74 I/O error, 130 interrupted (Ctrl+C — the shell convention for SIGINT).

What it writes

Standard .pqfe v2 containers — the format is FROZEN for the 1.x line and pinned by published cross-implementation test vectors. Anything pqfe encrypts, the library (and any conforming implementation) can decrypt, and vice versa.

Signatures are detached .sig sidecars (Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65 — both must verify), produced by the PostQuantum.FileEncryption.Signing package the tool bundles.

pqfe covers passphrase encryption and detached signing. For public-key (recipient) encryption — hybrid X25519 + ML-KEM-768, multi-recipient — use the PostQuantum.FileEncryption.Hybrid library package.

Source

Lives in the main repository at samples/Pqfe.Cli, built and published by the same release pipeline as the library: deterministic build, CycloneDX SBOM, and SLSA-style build-provenance attestation on every release.

To God be the glory — 1 Corinthians 10:31.