Are SSH keys and PGP keys the same thing?

Question

I have a 3072 bit RSA key that I generated for use with SSH. Can this key-pair be used with PGP/GPG, or do I need to generate a new pair of keys separately for use in email encryption?

Are the two interchangeable, or is there a difference between the two?

Even if they were, it's generally a bad idea to re-use the same key across multiple contexts. — Stephen Touset, Aug 31 '14 at 03:51
Both PGP and SSH support RSA public/private key pairs, so presumably it is possible. — lzam, Aug 31 '14 at 15:18
@StephenTouset would you elaborate why this is not a good idea in this case? — schatten, Sep 18 '15 at 01:48
See also this answer for why not to use the same key for signing and encryption. The reasoning about key management extends to SSH authentication too. — 0 _, Jul 31 '16 at 00:44

score 27 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 17 '17 at 13:21

27

Yes, the same RSA key pair can be used for both (Open)SSL and OpenPGP/GnuPG.

The monkeysphere project contains a tool to convert RSA keys in PEM format to the one defined by OpenPGP, pem2openpgp. For converting the SSH key pair into the PEM format, there already is a comprehensive answer in Converting keys between openssl and openssh.

edited Mar 17 '17 at 13:21

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answered Aug 31 '14 at 15:16

Jens Erat

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Are SSH keys and PGP keys the same thing?

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