PGP help
% pgp -h
Pretty Good Privacy(tm) 2.6.2 - Public-key encryption for the masses.
(c) 1990-1994 Philip Zimmermann, Phil's Pretty Good Software. 11 Oct 94
Uses the RSAREF(tm) Toolkit, which is copyright RSA Data Security, Inc.
Distributed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Export of this software may be restricted by the U.S. government.
Current time: 1996/11/09 13:15 GMT
Here's a quick summary of PGP v2.6 commands.
To encrypt a plaintext file with the recipient's public key:
pgp -e textfile her_userid
To sign a plaintext file with your secret key:
pgp -s textfile [-u your_userid]
To sign a plaintext file with your secret key, and then encrypt it
with the recipient's public key:
pgp -es textfile her_userid [-u your_userid]
To encrypt a plaintext file with just conventional cryptography, type:
pgp -c textfile
To decrypt an encrypted file, or to check the signature integrity of a
signed file:
pgp ciphertextfile [-o plaintextfile]
To encrypt a message for any number of multiple recipients:
pgp -e textfile userid1 userid2 userid3
--- Key management commands:
To generate your own unique public/secret key pair:
pgp -kg
To add a public or secret key file's contents to your public or
secret key ring:
pgp -ka keyfile [keyring]
To extract (copy) a key from your public or secret key ring:
pgp -kx userid keyfile [keyring]
or: pgp -kxa userid keyfile [keyring]
To view the contents of your public key ring:
pgp -kv[v] [userid] [keyring]
To view the "fingerprint" of a public key, to help verify it over
the telephone with its owner:
pgp -kvc [userid] [keyring]
To view the contents and check the certifying signatures of your
public key ring:
pgp -kc [userid] [keyring]
To edit the userid or pass phrase for your secret key:
pgp -ke userid [keyring]
To edit the trust parameters for a public key:
pgp -ke userid [keyring]
To remove a key or just a userid from your public key ring:
pgp -kr userid [keyring]
To sign and certify someone else's public key on your public key ring:
pgp -ks her_userid [-u your_userid] [keyring]
To remove selected signatures from a userid on a keyring:
pgp -krs userid [keyring]
To permanently revoke your own key, issuing a key compromise
certificate:
pgp -kd your_userid
To disable or reenable a public key on your own public key ring:
pgp -kd userid
--- Esoteric commands:
To decrypt a message and leave the signature on it intact:
pgp -d ciphertextfile
To create a signature certificate that is detached from the document:
pgp -sb textfile [-u your_userid]
To detach a signature certificate from a signed message:
pgp -b ciphertextfile
--- Command options that can be used in combination with other
command options (sometimes even spelling interesting words!):
To produce a ciphertext file in ASCII radix-64 format, just add the
-a option when encrypting or signing a message or extracting a key:
pgp -sea textfile her_userid
or: pgp -kxa userid keyfile [keyring]
To wipe out the plaintext file after producing the ciphertext file,
just add the -w (wipe) option when encrypting or signing a message:
pgp -sew message.txt her_userid
To specify that a plaintext file contains ASCII text, not binary, and
should be converted to recipient's local text line conventions, add
the -t (text) option to other options:
pgp -seat message.txt her_userid
To view the decrypted plaintext output on your screen (like the
Unix-style "more" command), without writing it to a file, use
the -m (more) option while decrypting:
pgp -m ciphertextfile
To specify that the recipient's decrypted plaintext will be shown
ONLY on her screen and cannot be saved to disk, add the -m option:
pgp -steam message.txt her_userid
To recover the original plaintext filename while decrypting, add
the -p option:
pgp -p ciphertextfile
To use a Unix-style filter mode, reading from standard input and
writing to standard output, add the -f option:
pgp -feast her_userid <inputfile >outputfile
Done...hit any key
%
This page last updated November 11, 1996.