MedicineMan's Tech Blog

Ever wonder how to encrypt your files?  GPG is your answer!   GPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard.   With this tool you are able to encrypt data and create digital signatures.     Let’s jump right in, shall we?

For single file encryption use the following argument:  -c
Example:

$ gpg -c mypasswords.txt
Enter passphrase: (enter desired password)
Repeat passphrase: (re-enter desired password)

This will not delete your mypasswords.txt. It will make a seperate file mypasswords.txt.gpg Once your file is encrypted, it would be best practice to delete the unencrypted file.

-c tells gpg to encrypt the file into a symmetrical cipher.

Note: There is no way to recover your password, so DO NOT forget your password.

Now lets say you want to decrypt the file.

$ gpg mypasswords.txt.gpg
gpg: CAST5 encrypted data
Enter passphrase: (password you created for file)