How to use GPG

GPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard. It’s a free, open-source tool that helps you encrypt and sign your data. The focus of this blog won’t be on the history of gpg - you can read more here¹ - however we will delve into how to use gpg

• from creating a gpg key
• to choosing which kind of key pair
• ending with some useful flags to keep in mind

Creating a GPG key

first things first you’ll need to make sure you have GPG installed on your system you can check with gpg --version. If not. Check out your package manager or GnuPG official website

Create a gpg key pair

gpg --full-gen-key

Choosing which kind of GPG key

• You will be prompted with different types of keys. we will choose a key that supports both signing and encrypting

Please select what kind of key you want:
   (1) RSA and RSA
   (2) DSA and Elgamal
   (3) DSA (sign only)
   (4) RSA (sign only)
   (9) ECC (sign and encrypt) *default*
  (10) ECC (sign only)
  (14) Existing key from card

• My recommendation will be (9) same as the default

Please select which elliptic curve you want:
   (1) Curve 25519 *default*
   (4) NIST P-384
   (6) Brainpool P-256

• I will choose the default as well. The famous algorithm Curve 25519
• then you will be asked about expiration, name, email address, and finally the master password

Let’s untangle what happened. We have made a pair of public/private keys for signing and encrypting any kind of data

to view them

for binary

• public: gpg --export > pub.gpg
• private: gpg --export-secret-keys > private.pgp

for ASCII use --armor flag

• public: gpg --armor --export > pub.asc
• private: gpg --armor --export-secret-keys > private.asc

GPG flags

those are some useful flags to keep in your pocket

• list pub keys: gpg --list-keys
• list private keys: gpg --list-secret-keys
• delete pub keys: gpg --delete-key
• delete private keys: gpg --delete-secret-key
• refresh keys: gpg --refresh-keys

References

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