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Today in this article we are going to show you how to Back Up and Restore GPG Keys on Linux. A modified version of the old encryption standard known as PGP is called GnuPG (or Gnu Privacy Guard) (or Pretty Good Privacy). GPG encrypts and signs communications and data using “public” and “private” key technique. Public key cryptography is an encryption method described in the OpenPGP standard.
GPG is a great way to ensure that two parties are communicating securely. This simplifies sharing private information over an unsecured network. Public and private keys are used in asynchronous key cryptography to encrypt and decode messages. We refer to this as asymmetric encryption. It allows you to send or publish your public key over an open insecure network.
Your public key is used to encrypt a message by the party trying to send you a secure message. You receive the message and use your private key to decrypt it after receiving it. You can then securely encrypt communications with the sender using the sender’s public key. They then decrypt the messages you have encrypted using your private key. We mentioned below are the steps to Back Up and Restore GPG Keys on Linux.
steps to go back Up and restore GPG keys on Linux
Backup GPG key
Step 1: What you need to back up is your GPG private key???????? To export your GPG private key, run the following command in your terminal:
$ gpg –export-secret-keys –armor name > /path/to/secret-key-backup.asc
Step 2: Replace the name above with the name you use when generating the GPG key. If you’re not sure what name you’re using, run the following command:
$ gpg –list-secret-keys
# Example command output:Users/risan/.gnupg/pubring.kbx——————————-sec rsa4096 2017-12-12 [SC]D020LB50C994521EB6E9EEE932B805973FE94CACuid [ultimate] laugh
ssb rsa4096 2017-12-12 [E]
Step 3: From the output above you can see in the uid line he uses risan for the name.
Step 4: O -armor option is used to export the key in ASCII format. If we don’t pass the –armor option, the key will be exported in binary format. Now all you have to do is store the generated file (secret-key-backup.asc) somewhere for your backup.
Step 5: In addition, you can also backup GPG trust database???????? you can just backup the file in ~/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg. Or you can also export it with the following command:
$ gpg –export-ownertrust > /path/to/trustdb-backup.txt
Restore GPG Key
Step 1: For to restore your GPG key from the backup file, just run the following command:
$ gpg —-import /path/to/secret-key-backup.asc
Step 2: Is for restore your GPG trust databaserun the following command:
# Will delete the existing trust database.$ rm ~/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg
gpg –import-ownertrust
Step 3: if you didn’t come back up your trusted database, the restored GPG key will have a “unknown” trust level. To set it to “final” or another trust level, run the following command:
$ gpg –edit-key name # Replace “name” with yours$ gpg> trust # Choose “ultimate” or another trust level $ gpg> save # Save changes
Final Words
We hope you like our article on how to Back Up and Restore GPG Keys on Linux. Geno Privacy Guard The GPG command-line utility for encrypting and decrypting files was created as a result of using this standard. normal. A public key encryption system is specified by the standard. Although it is called a “public key”, two keys are actually used. A public key and a private key are shared by everyone. As the name implies, private keys are not shared or given to third parties. Public key sharing can be done securely. In fact, for the system to work, public keys must be shared.