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I got an assignment to decrypt a binary file which is encrypted using aes. I have a 32 byte binary file which is a key for decryption. I know how to decrypt if the key is a passphrase by using

openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in file.out

In this case, the key is a binary file. How do I use it?

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Add -pass file:nameofkeyfile to the OpenSSL command line. This causes OpenSSL to read the password/passphrase from the named file, but otherwise proceed normally.

For more details, see the man page for openssl(1) (man 1 openssl) and particularly its section "PASS PHRASE ARGUMENTS", and the man page for enc(1) (man 1 enc).

If the key file actually holds the encryption key (not something from which to derive the encryption key), then you want to use -K instead. For that, you need something like:

-K $(hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X"' < nameofkeyfile)

in the OpenSSL command line instead of -pass. hexdump is used to transform the key file to the pure hexadecimal representation that OpenSSL wants.

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