- help
- Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
- decrypt
- Decrypts a message
Decrypts a message using either supplied keys, or by prompting
for a password. If message tampering is detected, an error is returned.
See below for details.
If certificates are supplied using the
"--signer-cert" option, any signatures that are found are
checked using these certificates. Verification is only successful if
there is no bad signature, and the number of successfully verified
signatures reaches the threshold configured with the
"--signatures" parameter.
If the signature verification fails, or if message tampering
is detected, the program terminates with an exit status indicating
failure. In addition to that, the last 25 MiB of the message are
withheld, i.e. if the message is smaller than 25 MiB, no output is
produced, and if it is larger, then the output will be truncated.
The converse operation is "sq encrypt".
- encrypt
- Encrypts a message
Encrypts a message for any number of recipients and with any
number of passwords, optionally signing the message in the process.
The converse operation is "sq decrypt".
- sign
- Signs messages or data files
Creates signed messages or detached signatures. Detached
signatures are often used to sign software packages.
The converse operation is "sq verify".
- verify
- Verifies signed messages or detached signatures
When verifying signed messages, the message is written to
stdout or the file given to --output.
When a detached message is verified, no output is produced.
Detached signatures are often used to sign software packages.
Verification is only successful if there is no bad signature,
and the number of successfully verified signatures reaches the threshold
configured with the "--signatures" parameter. If the
verification fails, the program terminates with an exit status
indicating failure. In addition to that, the last 25 MiB of the message
are withheld, i.e. if the message is smaller than 25 MiB, no output is
produced, and if it is larger, then the output will be truncated.
The converse operation is "sq sign".
- armor
- Converts binary to ASCII
To make encrypted data easier to handle and transport, OpenPGP
data can be transformed to an ASCII representation called ASCII Armor.
sq emits armored data by default, but this subcommand can be used to
convert existing OpenPGP data to its ASCII-encoded representation.
The converse operation is "sq dearmor".
- dearmor
- Converts ASCII to binary
To make encrypted data easier to handle and transport, OpenPGP
data can be transformed to an ASCII representation called ASCII Armor.
sq transparently handles armored data, but this subcommand can be used
to explicitly convert existing ASCII-encoded OpenPGP data to its binary
representation.
The converse operation is "sq armor".
- inspect
- Inspects data, like file(1)
It is often difficult to tell from cursory inspection using
cat(1) or file(1) what kind of OpenPGP one is looking at. This
subcommand inspects the data and provides a meaningful human-readable
description of it.
- key
- Manages keys
We use the term "key" to refer to OpenPGP keys that
do contain secrets. This subcommand provides primitives to generate and
otherwise manipulate keys.
Conversely, we use the term "certificate", or cert
for short, to refer to OpenPGP keys that do not contain secrets. See
"sq keyring" for operations on certificates.
- keyring
- Manages collections of keys or certs
Collections of keys or certficicates (also known as
"keyrings" when they contain secret key material, and
"certrings" when they don't) are any number of concatenated
certificates. This subcommand provides tools to list, split, join,
merge, and filter keyrings.
Note: In the documentation of this subcommand, we sometimes
use the terms keys and certs interchangeably.
- certify
- Certifies a User ID for a Certificate
Using a certification a keyholder may vouch for the fact that
another certificate legitimately belongs to a user id. In the context of
emails this means that the same entity controls the key and the email
address. These kind of certifications form the basis for the Web Of
Trust.
This command emits the certificate with the new certification.
The updated certificate has to be distributed, preferably by sending it
to the certificate holder for attestation. See also "sq key
attest-certification".
- packet
- Low-level packet manipulation
An OpenPGP data stream consists of packets. These tools allow
working with packet streams. They are mostly of interest to developers,
but "sq packet dump" may be helpful to a wider audience both
to provide valuable information in bug reports to OpenPGP-related
software, and as a learning tool.
- autocrypt
- Communicates certificates using Autocrypt
Autocrypt is a standard for mail user agents to provide
convenient end-to-end encryption of emails. This subcommand provides a
limited way to produce and consume headers that are used by Autocrypt to
communicate certificates between clients.
See https://autocrypt.org/