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I use ssh regularly and have ssh-agent set up.

How can I use ssh keys to gpg-encrypt a file?

Edit: It seems that this is impossible. Why? ssh can encrypt traffic, so why not also files?

nalply
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2 Answers2

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No, SSH keys are not PGP keys and serve different purpose .
You must have PGP keys in GnuPG keyring.
But - you can convert GPG keys to SSH keys (using gpgkey2ssh) and gpg-agent can take care of SSH keys (using --enable-ssh option). I believe no such tool exists for converting SSH keys to GPG keys and cannot exist.

Mauricio Pasquier Juan
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Kristaps
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  • I prefer to work in the reverse: use gpg with ssh keys, since I already have an extensive ssh infrastructure. – nalply Sep 15 '10 at 12:15
  • that is not possible. Just view size of SSH public key and GPG public key -> SSH key contains much less info. – Kristaps Sep 15 '10 at 18:34
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    Okay, some things are not possible with SSH keys but I believe that encryption **is possible** since ssh encrypts traffic. Perhaps I should have asked: How can I encrypt a file with an SSH key? – nalply Sep 16 '10 at 11:48
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    http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/27005/encrypting-file-only-with-ssh-priv-key answers that question. – ceejayoz Jan 08 '14 at 19:56
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It seems that this is impossible. Why? ssh can encrypt traffic, so why not also files?

SSH can encrypt, just not in a GPG compatible manner.

Per https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/27005/encrypting-file-only-with-ssh-priv-key:

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -in my.pdf -out mydata.enc

and

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -in mydata.enc -out mydecrypted.pdf

should do the trick.

Community
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ceejayoz
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