GPG key administration for Middle-ware Administrators

GnuPG is a tool for secure communication. Using this tool administrators can create public/private key pair which can be used by to encrypt and decrypt critical information. GnuPG uses public-key cryptography so that users may communicate securely. In a public-key system, each user has a pair of keys consisting of a private key and a public key. A user's private key is kept secret; it need never be revealed. The public key may be given to anyone with whom the user wants to communicate.

In this article I intend to provide some basic steps to create and use such key pairs. Also I will try to provide some very informative and useful links pertaining to this topic. Often you may receive requests to generate key pairs required for PGP encryption. How do you do that ?

Ok ! first things first. In order to create the required key pairs you will need to install GnuPG on the system you intend to encrypt the message on. You can also install GnuPG on your local machine but then you will need to import the key to the source system where you will be encrypting the message.Installation of GnuPG will create a key ring which stores the below.

• pubring.gpg     # stores the public keys
• secring.gpg     # has your secret keys
• trustdb.gpg     # the levels of trust for signed keys

On windows the key ring was stored at C:\Users\<>\AppData\Roaming\gnupg. On Linux based system the default location is .gnupg (hidden directory) under the OS user default directory location.You will need to use ls -la option to view this directory on Linux/Solaris systems.

Now for installing GnuPG tool I will highly recommend you follow this blog. I feel the blog is very detailed and takes you through the below topics.

• Downloading the software
• Installing the software
• Generating the key pair
• Exporting Public/Private keys
• Obtaining private keys
• Importing private/public keys
• Encrypting/Decrypting message

The blog shows how to do the above using Kleopatra a GUI tool for certificate management. I personally like the tool since it is very intuitive and easy to use. Same will be installed while you install GnuPG (mentioned in blog above. In case you want to use command line to do the above (like on UNIX based systems) you can easily do so by using commands mentioned here.

The GNU Privacy handbook talks of all these steps and even more. I highly recommend you go through the content to understand more on this subject. The documentation is available here 

I hope this post was helpful. Please let me know in the comment section ! 

Happy Learning
Soumya Mishra