Encrypting Files Using GnuPG

This post shows how to use GnuPG to encrypt and decrypt files on a Linux environment.

1. If you haven't created your GnuPG key pair yet, you can use the following commands to create them and view their details.

Create a pair of GnuPG keys using the following command.

gpg --gen-key

The keys and their relevant information are stored in .gnupg directory under your home directory. You can view the public keys in your keyring using the following command.

gpg --list-key

You can view the private keys using the following command.

gpg --list-secret-keys

2. Encrypting a file called "private-file.txt" can be done as follows. We can either specify a new name for the encrypted file or GnuPG will automatically name the new file by appending .gpg extension to the name of the plaintext file.

gpg --encrypt --recipient your.email@gdomain.com private-file.txt

gpg --output encrypted.gpg --encrypt --recipient your.email@gdomain.com private-file.txt

3. Decrypting a file called "private-file.txt.gpg" can be done as follows. Similar to the previous case, we can either specify a name for the decrypted file or leave it to the default.

gpg --output private-file.txt --decrypt private-file.txt.gpg

gpg --decrypt encrypted.gpg > private-file.txt

4. Encrypting all the files in a directory can be done as follows.

gpg --encrypt-files --recipient your.email@gdomain.com /path/to/the/directory/*

5. Decrypting all the .gpg files in a particular directory can be done as follows.

gpg --decrypt-files /path/to/the/directory/*.gpg

Resources: 

1. https://blog.ghostinthemachines.com/2015/03/01/how-to-use-gpg-command-line/

2. https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.pdf

~*************~