
Type the command ls and you should see all of the GPG files ( Figure A).

If you open the GPG Suite GUI, you'll see that new GPP key listed. You might find yourself needing a keypair in the. Should that be the case, you can export your private key from the command line. To do that, go back to the terminal window and locate the key you want to export with the command: gpg -list-secret-keys You should see a list of all of your secret keys. Copy that string down and then issue the command: gpg -export-secret-keys ID > my-private-key.asc Associated with each listing will be a key ID (a long string of random characters). You should now have a file named my-private-key.asc, located in the current working directory. You can then copy that file and use it for whatever purpose you need. Just make sure to not give out any of your private key files to anyone. To export your public key, issue the command: gpg -armor -export ID > my-pubkey.asc The only keys you should hand out are the public keys. The above key will export the public key into an asc file. You can then share that public key with whoever requires it.Īnd that's the gist of managing your GPG keys on macOS from the command line. Enjoy making use of those encryption keys.Groups came up with several standards to accomplish this. One of those is Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, or S/MIME, which is what Apple Mail uses. Another is PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. You probably know of this one in the form of OpenPGP. How Secure Email Worksīoth methods use Public Key Cryptography to digitally sign, encrypt, and then decrypt your email. They rely on a pair of keys, one public and one private.
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Once you receive a digitally signed email, your mail software saves the sender’s public key so you can later send encrypted messages to that person.Īs your email software digitally signs and encrypts a message, it’s doing two things: When you send a digitally signed email to someone, you’re signing the email with your private key and sending that person the public portion of your keypair.

Using S/MIME, the user obtains the certificate and keypair from a centralized trusted authority. These are referred to as CAs, or Certificate Authorities. OpenPGP, on the other hand, doesn’t rely on a centralized trusted authority. You, as the user, sign your keypair and then others verify whether or not the key really belongs to you by signing it themselves. OpenPGP relies on something called a Web of Trust, in which everybody is a potential CA. The theory is that you can trust a public key because it’s been signed by many other people, confirming that it really belongs to the person you think it does. In theory, OpenPGP could be a much stronger method of security. This is true because CAs lose their trustworthiness occasionally. Recently, the tech industry investigated two CAs, WoSign and StartCom, because of trust problems. The industry determined that those CAs failed to maintain the high standards expected of them.
