I don't want to get bogged down managing long crypto keys. However, things like rainbow tables seem to make eight letter passwords really quite vulnerable.

Can eight letter passwords securely encrypt data (with GPG)? If it can, what algorithm do I need to use? Do I use a slow inefficient algorithm? Is the file size relevant?

Should I just do something like this to generate a passphrase:

A common way to maintain passwords is to use a phrase you can remember or a sentence of words with punctuation. This is a great strategy to use in place of typical password practices that actually results in a much stronger password.

Most popular password managers for Linux will support storing these type of passwords and will allow access by use of one master password. When you unlock a password keyring, typically any password access will be copied to your clipboard where you can just copy and paste a passwords into the appropriate field. After so many seconds the clipboard contents get cleared.

Here is an example of a password manager that has all these features:

www.passwordstore.org

2 members found this post helpful.

Cute - might have to move over to that.