Neatly managing and handling PGP/GnuPG keyrings
Key Service
PGP/GnuPG is becoming increasingly popular, thanks to digital crime and government surveillance. We take a look behind the scenes and show how you can keep your keyring current and valid.
If you want to encrypt your data traffic, you first have to gain a general understanding of the concepts and individual steps necessary. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) or GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) let you create key pairs – public and private – and group your keys in keyrings. In this article, I discuss the tools for managing these keyrings and keeping them up to date, including checking them regularly for validity.
Once you have your key pair, you pass your public key to your communication partners. Traditionally, that either occurs directly as a character string in an email attachment [1], in printed form (e.g., during a key-signing party) [2], or by downloading the key from a web page. For some time, it's been possible to use QR codes that you can receive, check, and manage on your smartphone. In Figure 1, you can see the Monkeysign [3] GUI with the QR code key.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
-
A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.