PGP...

[Sean Walberg]

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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 at 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 at cc.umanitoba.ca
The Web Guy                  http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umwalber 
UNIX Group, U. of Manitoba          PGP Key Available from Servers


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