View source for GPG: Encrypt And Decrypt Files With A Password

[[File:Gpg.png|100px|frameless|right|GPG Encrypt&Decrypt]]
==GPG: Encrypt And Decrypt Files With A Password==

When looking to encrypt a file, one of the best choices are to use GPG, GPG is a free service that almost all servers come with. You can encrypt and decrypt a file using GPG.

===gnup===

GnuPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard and GNU's tool for secure communctions and data storage. 

===Encrypting a file under Linux using GPG===

To encrypt a single file, aka a password file run:
 gpg -c password.txt

It will ask you to create a password on for the file after running that command.

You will notice that in your directory you see a file called password.txt.gpg

Now it will keep the original file as well as create the password.txt.gpg

Now I would suggest removing the orginal password.txt file

 rm password.txt

===Decrypting a file under Linux using GPG===

Now whats the fun of encrypting the file, if you can not use it.

Well now you will need to decrypt the file to view the contents.

 gpg -d password.txt.gpg

Now that will display in your terminal, say you want to modify the file, you will need to save that to a file and re encrypt it

 gpg  -o password.txt -d password.txt.gpg

Add/Remove information from password.txt, and re encrypt it

 gpg -c password.txt && rm password.txt

Please note that if you ever forgot your password (passphrase), you cannot recover the data as it use very strong encryption.

[[Category:Centos]]