-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Nope. With PGP you get 2 keys... One you keep secret (secret key), the other you make public (public key). This way, if I want to send you a message, I don't need to talk to you to arrange for a session key or any passcodes, because PGP takes care of it. Say you wanted to send me a message... You check your keyring (pgp -kv), but alas my key isn't there. So you go to the keyserver (http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html), and retreive my key into a file (sean.asc). Then you run pgp on it (pgp sean.asc) and it gets integrated into your keyring. Now you type your message to me, and encrypt it with *my* public key, and *sign it with your private key* (pgp -sea message_to_sean.txt 0xD12B3419). Then you send it off to me. (The 0xD12B3419 is my key id, and is displayed when you play with my key) When I get it, I can export it to a file (message.asc), and run pgp on it (pgp message.asc). Hey, it is signed, so I grab your key from the server, and pgp message.asc it again. Since you encrypted it with my public key, _only my secret key_ can decrypt it, not even you can see it! Also, since only you have access to your secret key, (if your signature checks out), I know it had to have been you who wrote the message and it was not tampered with. (To be technically correct, I don't exactly know it was you, since I haven't trusted your key at this point, but we'll let that one slide) - From this point, we can send and receive messages pretty easily, since we don't have to snarf keys. It is also a bit easier than I make it out to be, because there are many automation tools out there for pgp. Sean On Tue, 13 Aug 1996 sasa.roskar@uni-lj.si wrote:
I'm confused.... if you don't want people to be able to read your email, you code it with PGP or other encoders... but why give away your key on your website to everyone? That makes your email readable to everyone... doesn't it? Oh well... I hope someone can explain this to me...
Roki
- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Sean Walberg umwalber@cc.umanitoba.ca The Web Guy http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umwalber UNIX Group, U. of Manitoba PGP Key Available from Servers -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv Comment: Processed by mkpgp, a Pine/PGP interface. iQCVAwUBMhCMc982JgvRKzQZAQEjYAP/SWjf2z2lZjYzBKVRMo9fcaMEZXiQSal2 YRjhzIXI9LyOF+mEz+KvPscJEsKqwM0JQl64ZpYhvp2junRly292jflIpxsnSJSS ZteKoFJ+JE2Rd4TMDHbojucAEN4ZrW0G5y6RUcT5ntkKKWCzjGnYhSeM//bb9mOe ccq+A8aI9dY= =j2nK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----