No More Secrets

"No More Secrets" is the name I've lovingly given to the infamous "decrypting text" effect seen on screen in the 1992 hacker movie Sneakers. If you are unfamiliar with the effect, it can be seen at 0:35 in this youtube video.

This project provides tools to recreate this effect in your projects.

Here is a standalone executable called nms (provided in this project) that uses these tools to perform this effect on piped data:

Also included in this project is a program called sneakers that utilizes these tools to recreate, almost identically, what we see in the above movie clip.

What's Provided

Two tools are provided for you to recreate this effect:

1. A standalone executable file named nms (shown above). This program performs the "decrypting text" effect on data it receives via shell pipe.

2. A module and header file, written in C, that can be used to recreate this effect in other projects. In fact, the standalone executable nms is really just an example that shows how to use this module with piped data.

Installing the Standalone Executable

See the INSTALL file for a list of instructions for various operating systems.

Using the Standalone Executable

nms accepts data from a shell pipe. Simply pipe some data to it and enjoy the magic!

ls -l / | nms

Once the "encrypted" data is displayed, the program will pause until you press a key. Then the decryption effect will start. After that is completed, it will again pause until you press a key, at which point the program will terminate.

Command Line Options

Use the -a option to set the auto_decrypt flag. This will automatically start the decryption effect, eliminating the need for the user to press a key to start it.

ls -l / | nms -a

Use the -f option to set foreground color to either white, yellow, black, magenta, blue, green, or red - this is blue by default.

ls -l / | nms -f green

Using the Module in Your Program

NOTE: Be sure that you have the ncurses library installed on your system. See "Installing the Standalone Executable" above for more info.

Synopsis

// myprog.c

#include "nms.h"

int main() {
    NmsArgs args = INIT_NMSARGS;

    args.src = "This is a simple test";

    nms_exec(&args);

    return 0;
}

Compile myprog.c (must include nms.c and -lncurses):

gcc nms.c myprog.c -o myprog -lncurses

How-To

Copy these two files to your project:

nms.h
nms.c

Include nms.h in your program file:

#include "nms.h"

Next, declare and initialize the structure that needs to be passed to nms_exec():

NmsArgs args = INIT_NMSARGS;

INIT_NMSARGS is a defined name that assigns a default set of values to all of the structure members. It is recommended that you use it. If you don't, you will have to manually assign a value to each structure member.

Here is how the structure is defined:

typedef struct {
    char *src;
    char *foreground_color;
    char *return_opts;
    int input_cursor_x;
    int input_cursor_y;
    bool show_cursor;
    bool auto_decrypt;
} NmsArgs;

• char *src
  • Pointer to the string of characters on which to perform the effect.
• char *foreground_color
  • Pointer to a string containing the desired foreground color: white, yellow, black, magenta, blue, green, red.
• char *return_opts
  • String pointer containing only the character options that the user must choose from once the src characters are revealed. For example, if you are showing a menu with six options, this string might be "123456". The user will have to choose one of these characters before execution is handed back to the calling function. Note that the character selected is returned by nms_exec();
• int input_cursor_x and int input_cursor_y
  • If your menu has a specific location that you'd like to place the cursor for user input, use these to set the x and y screen coordinates for the position.
• bool show_cursor
  • Set to true if you want the cursor to be visible during the text decryption effect. It is set to false by default.
• bool auto_decrypt
  • Set to true to automatically start the decryption effect, eliminating the need for the user to press a key to start it.

Assign values to the structure members as needed. Then simply pass a pointer to the structure to the nms_exec() function:

nms_exec(&args);

Note that nms_exec() prompts the user to press a key to start the "decrypting text" effect, and again once the text has been fully revealed. The key that is pressed at the second prompt is returned to the calling function so that it can be used as input after displaying a menu.

Compiling

Add nms.c to your source file list, and link the ncurses library -lncurses when compiling:

gcc nms.c myprog.c -o myprog -lncurses

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See COPYING for more details.