How to Export Private / Secret ASC Key to Decrypt GPG Files

Solution 1:

You can export the private key with the command-line tool from GPG. It works on the Windows-shell. Use the following command:

gpg --export-secret-keys

A normal export with --export will not include any private keys, therefore you have to use --export-secret-keys.

Edit:

To sum up the information given in my comments, this is the command that allows you to export a specific key with the ID 1234ABCD to the file secret.asc:

gpg --export-secret-keys --armor 1234ABCD > secret.asc

You can find the ID that you need using the following command. The ID is the second part of the second column:

gpg --list-keys

To Export just 1 specific secret key instead of all of them:

gpg --export-secret-keys keyIDNumber > exportedKeyFilename.asc

keyIDNumber is the number of the key id for the desired key you are trying to export.

Solution 2:

All the above replies are correct, but might be missing one crucial step, you need to edit the imported key and "ultimately trust" that key

gpg --edit-key (keyIDNumber)
gpg> trust

Please decide how far you trust this user to correctly verify other users' keys
(by looking at passports, checking fingerprints from different sources, etc.)

  1 = I don't know or won't say
  2 = I do NOT trust
  3 = I trust marginally
  4 = I trust fully
  5 = I trust ultimately
  m = back to the main menu

and select 5 to enable that imported private key as one of your keys

Solution 3:

See the treatment by Dark Otter

https://montemazuma.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/moving-a-gpg-key-privately/

If the site is down use reference the archive.org backup:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170518155052/https://montemazuma.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/moving-a-gpg-key-privately/

which includes a reasonably secure way to transfer keys. You could put that recommendation into shell-scripts shown below for repeated use.

First get the KEYID you want from the list shown by

$ gpg -K

From the resulting list note the KEYID (the 8 hexadecimals following sec) you need for transfer.

Then envoke the tested shell scipts "export_private_key" on the first account and generate your pubkey.gpg + keys.asc. Subsequently invoke on the second account "import_private_key". Here is their content shown with cat (copy & paste content):

$ cat export_private_key 
gpg -K
echo "select private key"
read KEYID
gpg --output pubkey.gpg --export $KEYID
echo REMEMBER THE COMING PASS-PHRASE
gpg --output - --export-secret-key $KEYID | \
   cat pubkey.gpg - | \
   gpg --armor --output keys.asc --symmetric --cipher-algo AES256
ls -l pubkey.gpg keys.asc
####################  E X P O R T _ P R I V A T E _ K E Y  #####################

Now tranfer by some means the "pubkey.gpg" (if needed) and the private "keys.asc" to the second account and envoke the below-shown program.

$ cat import_private_key 
gpg --no-use-agent --output - keys.asc | gpg --import
###################  I M P O R T _ P R I V A T E _ K E Y  ######################

In Otter's spirit "And that, should be, that".