Easy Encryption of R Objects using Strong Modern Cryptography

Encrypt R objects to a raw vector or file using modern cryptographic techniques. Password-based key derivation is with 'Argon2' (< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon2>). Objects are serialized and then encrypted using 'XChaCha20-Poly1305' (< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChaCha20-Poly1305>) which follows RFC 8439 for authenticated encryption (< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticated_encryption>). Cryptographic functions are provided by the included 'monocypher' 'C' library (< https://monocypher.org>).

Encryption for R Data

{rmonocypher} provides a simple, high-level interface for easily encrypting R objects using a strong, modern cryptographic technique.

A typical use-case this package addresses:

I want to easily encrypt and save data to a public location 
(e.g. shared drive, cloud drive, etc) which only I can decrypt.

What’s in the box

• decrypt()/encrypt() read/write encrypted R objects to file
• argon2() derives encryption keys from passwords
• rbyte() generates secure random bytes using your operating system’s CSPRNG.

Technical bona fides

• Cryptographic primitives are provided by the included monocypher library (v4.0.2)
• Encryption method is XChaCha20-Poly1305 which combines ChaCha20 stream cipher (extended nonce variant) with Poly1305 message authentication.
• Encryption process follows RFC 8439 ‘Authenticated Encryption with Additional Data (AEAD)’
• Key derivation uses Argon2 password-based key derviation.
• Cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generation (CSPRNG) is provided by the operating system are used to generate any required random bytes.

Installation

You can install the latest development version from GitHub with:

# install.package('remotes')
remotes::install_github('coolbutuseless/rmonocypher')

Read/write data to an encrypted file

Encrypt any R object and save to file.

encrypt(mydata, dst = "SharedDrive/mydata.dat", key = "mykey")

Then decrypt the object using the same key.

decrypt(src = "SharedDrive/mydata.dat", key = "mykey")

For more details on how passwords are used to derive encryption keys, and for other ways of supplying and generating keys see the Vignette: Encryption Keys.

Vignettes

• Encryption Keys
  • Generating encryption keys from passwords with argon2()
  • Using random bytes as the encryption key
  • Using hexadecimal string as the encryption key
• Technical Notes
  • Background on the encryptiong techniques used
• Using Additional Data
  • Advanced technique which is not needed for regular use of this package.
  • Details on using additional data
  • Worked example