Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is one of the most widely used encryption methods used in the world. It was created by Philip Zimmermann in 1991 who believed that the right to privacy is “as apple-pie as the constitution“. GnuPGP, or GPG for short, implements the OpenPGP standard.
Uses of PGP
Encrypt data in transit: while being transferred between two locations (over the local network, internet, etc.) data can be encrypted to prevent a third party from being able to read / open a message
Encrypt data at rest: files sitting on a hard drive can be kept in an encrypted format so that it cannot be opened without providing a correct key
Digital signature: whether it’s a simple text message or a GitHub commit, a PGP signature can help prove “I wrote this”.
How I use PGP
From a practical standpoint, I use PGP encryption and signatures for programming and research purposes. Git is a software used for “version control”. Datalad is a newer software which “wraps” around git and git-annex. I will describe this in a future post. For now, in short, datalad
helps you keep track of research data, including what changes have been made to the data set, who made them, and when they were made.
My PGP Public Key
You can quickly add my public key by pasting the following code into your terminal. It will automatically create a new file in your home directory called pranav-mishra-public.key
(GPG key ID: 509C9F1324C7FCA8) You can verify that this is the same key I am using to sign commits at GitHub (Tip: you can check the GPG public key of any user by visiting
cat >> ~/pranav-mishra-public.key<<EOF
Pranav Kumar Mishra
Public PGP Key
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----