gpg does not ask for password

Question

I encrypted one file with gpg -c <file> and closed the terminal. After a while, I tried to decrypt it with gpg <file> and it decrypted it, without asking for a password. Is that normal? How to guarantee that gpg will ask for a password, even in my same computer?

Answer 1

This is normal, gpg now uses gpg-agent to manage private keys, and the agent caches keys for a certain amount of time (up to two hours by default, with a ten minute inactivity timeout).

To change the defaults, create or edit a file named ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf, and use the following entries:

• default-cache-ttl specifies the amount of time a cache entry is kept after its last use, in seconds (600 by default);
• max-cache-ttl specifies the maximum amount of time a cache entry is kept, in seconds (7200 by default).

After changing these, you’ll need to reload the configuration (try sending SIGHUP to gpg-agent, or killing it outright).

Answer 2

To make gpg >=2.1 always ask for a passphrase, run it with gpg --pinentry-mode loopback.

To make gpg >=2.2.7 always ask for a passphrase for --symmetric (-c) encryption, run it with gpg --no-symkey-cache.

Answer 3

GnuPG 2.2.15

  --symmetric
          -c  Encrypt with a symmetric cipher using a passphrase. The default sym-
          metric cipher used is AES-128, but may be chosen with the  --cipher-algo
          option.  This command may be combined with --sign (for a signed and sym-
          metrically encrypted message), --encrypt (for  a  message  that  may  be
          decrypted  via  a  secret  key or a passphrase), or --sign and --encrypt
          together (for a signed message that may be decrypted via a secret key or
          a  passphrase).  gpg caches the passphrase used for symmetric encryption
          so that a decrypt operation may not require that the user needs to enter
          the  passphrase.   The  option  --no-symkey-cache can be used to disable
          this feature.

# encrypt files
gpg -c --no-symkey-cache file.txt
# decrypt files
gpg --no-symkey-cache file.txt.gpg

with --no-symkey-cache option, it will not cache your password

Answer 4

Just adding up... I use this simple function on my .bashrc, so that every time I want to force the password to be prompted again I can easily do so by just running gpg-reload from my terminal instead of waiting for the cache to be automatically cleared:

 gpg-reload(){
     pkill scdaemon
     pkill gpg-agent
     gpg-connect-agent /bye >/dev/null 2>&1
     gpg-connect-agent updatestartuptty /bye >/dev/null 2>&1
     gpgconf --reload gpg-agent
 }

Hope it helps!

Answer 5

Is your private key tied to a password? This is something you set at key creation time.

If not, GPG won't ask for a password, as none is required. It will simply rely on the key you provide.

And if so, should you have entered your password during another operation right before, GPG will not ask for this password again until a few minutes have passed.