Generating Random Bytes On the Command Line with OpenSSL

I've recently needed to generate an AES encryption key for a new project I've been working on.

I needed to generate a specific number of bytes, and fortunately the OpenSSL CLI came to the rescue with openssl rand:

# raw bytes
openssl rand 32
# as base64
openssl rand -base64 32
# as a hex representation
openssl rand -hex 32

Written by Jamie Tanna's profile image Jamie Tanna on .

Content for this article is shared under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International, and code is shared under the Apache License 2.0.

This blog post is 100% human-written, and has nothing derived from LLMs (be it code, editorial support or prose).

This post was filed under articles.

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