security by obscurity, not good!

if you use this then at least have very restricted filesystem permissions

 
#"crypt"
perl -e 'print unpack "H*","pass"'

#"decrypt"
perl -e 'print pack "H*","70617373"'

Not ideal, but a start...

 
#crypt
echo -n "VCN Password: "
read PASS
echo -n "${PASS}" > pw.txt
echo "next is a master password"
`openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -in pw.txt -out pw.bin`
rm -f pw.txt

# decrypt
PASS=$(openssl aes-256-cbc -d -in pw.bin)
echo "${PASS}"