riftx

A CLI tool for creating encrypted archives. It pipelines tar archiving, xz compression, and ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption into a single .riftx file.

Motivation

This CLI tool helps you securely move project folders between computers. By compressing and encrypting your directories, it allows for faster and safer transfers over public cloud services like OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox.

Note: riftx does not aim to substitute version control systems (like Git) or act as a continuous sync engine. It is simply a secure wrapper to pack and unpack your folders before transferring them.

How it works

1. The source directory is archived with tar and compressed with xz
2. A key is derived from your password using Argon2id
3. The compressed stream is encrypted in 64 KB frames using ChaCha20-Poly1305 with counter-based nonces

Installation

Build from source

cargo install --path .

Download pre-compiled binary

Grab the latest executable from the Releases page.

Usage

# Pack a directory to a .riftx file
riftx pack --input ./my-project

# Unpack a .riftx file
riftx unpack --input backup.riftx

# Pack with a custom output path
riftx pack --input ./my-project --output backup.riftx

# Unpack a .riftx file to a specific directory
riftx unpack --input backup.riftx --output ./restored

# Pack without encryption (produces a tar.xz)
riftx pack --input ./my-project --output my-project.tar.xz --no-enc

# Unpack without encryption (unpacks a tar.xz)
riftx unpack --input my-project.tar.xz --output ./restored --no-enc

Aliases: p for pack, u for unpack.

Note

If --no-enc is used without --output the resulting <INPUT>.riftx file is actually a standard .tar.xz archive that can be renamed and extracted with standard tools if needed.

Password resolution

Passwords are resolved in this order:

1. --password flag (Highest priority - Insecure)
2. RIFTX_PASSWORD environment variable
3. Interactive prompt (Lower priority - Safest)

Warning

Using the --password flag exposes your secret to process listings (ps aux) and shell history files. Always prefer the interactive prompt.

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License & Disclaimer

Copyright (c) 2026, Ludovico Pestarino. Use at your own risk. This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License see the LICENSE file for details