What is the difference between GPG and OpenSSH? [closed]

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What is the difference between the GNU Privacy Guard and Open SSH?

I'm pretty new to these things and I AFAIK you can use both for encryption and both are free. Can anyone explain what one offers and the other doesn't? And why was there a need for GPG if OpenPGP was already free software?

Answer 1

GnuPG (the GNU Privacy Guard) is a software for signing and encrypting messages. OpenSSH is for secure remote console access (and can do some more stuff like port forwarding). These are two totally different tools solving totally different problems.

OpenPGP is the standard GnuPG (and others) implements. OpenPGP is not a software, but a file format and protocol! Symantec PGP (after being sold and renamed a few times) was the first software to implement OpenPGP (actually the standard only got published some years after PGP was released).