GPG is quite nice. I’ve only come to really appreciate it more recently with my delvation into Keybase.io and all the small, unimportant messages i can send to my friends:)

Here are some examples of using symmetric enc on single files.

Encrypting a file using AES256:

gpg --pgp7 --cipher-algo AES256 -c wallet.dat

Use/Load an encrypted private key in ssh-agent for 12 hours (without leaving an unencrypted copy on the fs):

ssh-add -t 12h =(gpg -d $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.gpg) &> /dev/null

Of course, the best part about gpg is the public/private keys you can use to send messages/files to certain people and sign data for further assurances.

To get going with this sort of thing,

  1. Check out keybase.io, an online portal to defining your gpg identity. (tell me if you need an invite)
  2. Check out the gnupg vim plugin allowing you to utilize vim to create secure files.
  3. See these excellent articles in setting up that vim plugin and creating your own encrpyted password repository!
Mario Loria is a builder of diverse infrastructure with modern workloads on both bare-metal and cloud platforms. He's traversed roles in system administration, network engineering, and DevOps. You can learn more about him here.