What is PGP?

Rastislav Stanik

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Mar 1, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/1/96

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Sven Buschke (buschkea) wrote:
: Hello!

: Does anyone have a good link to manual page, where the principles of PGP
: are explained? It's all complete new to me. In this Newsgroup are too few
: articles.
: Please Reply to "Sven.B...@extern.lrz-muenchen.de"
: Thank you, Sven.

I can't believe my eyes reading above!

1. if you have pgp package it contains pgpdoc1.txt(84kB) and
pgpdoc2.txt(134kB), man page (19kB) and several minor files
about keyservers, licenses etc.
2. There is lot of references to another sources in these files.
3. FAQ is regulary sent to alt.security.pgp. I still have short
version on my newsserver -> it's not long ago (<10days ?)
it was posted again.
3. if you read more than 3 artciles in this news group you
will find out that a lot of people have PGP-URL int their signature.
4. There is more than 60 articles in this newsgroup every day.
I have trouble read all of them if I do not read some of them during
work hours! :-) And you tell me "In this Newsgroup are too few articles".

Finaly, quoting from news articles:
WHERE CAN I GET MORE PGP INFORMATION?

http://www.csn.net/~mpj
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/warlord/pgp-faq.html
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Issues/Crypto/ITAR_export/cryptusa_paper.ps.gz
ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-pgp-pgpformat-00.txt
ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-pem-mime-08.txt
http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/mitp/recent-books/comp/pgp-source.html
http://web.cnam.fr/Network/Crypto/survey.html
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~phinely/MacPGP-and-AppleScript-FAQ.html
http://www.pgp.net/pgp
http://www.sydney.sterling.com:8080/~ggr/pgpmoose.html
http://www.stack.urc.tue.nl/~galactus/remailers/

You are welcome when you read *all* of above!

Ed Falk

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Mar 1, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/1/96

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In article <4gv7bl$h...@arcadia.informatik.uni-muenchen.de>,

Sven Buschke <buschkea> wrote:
>
>Does anyone have a good link to manual page, where the principles of PGP

>are explained? ...

In brief (from my FAQ):

PGP stands for "Pretty Good Privacy". It uses what is called "public
key encryption", which is a system where your key is split into two
parts: a secret key which you keep to yourself, and a public key which
you publish freely. Anybody can use your public key to send you a
message, but only you can read it.

Pgp has uses beyond simply encrypting secret messages; it can also be
used to digitally "sign" outgoing messages with your private key in an
indisputable and incorruptible way. This means that anybody can read
your message, but only you could have sent it. A digital signature
cannot be forged, and a signed document cannot be altered without
invalidating the signature.

Another advantage of pgp over more mundane crypto is that it uses a
"public key" system. That is, your encryption key may safely be made
public -- publish it in the daily news if you like. Anyone who gets a
copy of your public key can send you secret messages without prior
arrangement, but only you can read them. This works because separate
keys are used for encoding and decoding messages. The encoding key is
the one you make public; the decoding key is kept private.

For full security, you send messages that have been both signed by
your private key, and encrypted by the recipient's public key. Only
your friend can read the message, and your friend knows that only you
could have sent it.

I won't go into the internals of PGP here. See Sherry Mayo's
excellent primer, referenced below.

Good links:

Sherry Mayo's excellent primer
http://rschp2.anu.edu.au:8080/crypt.html

Pretty Good Privacy, from the UK
http://www.mantis.co.uk/pgp/pgp.html

PGP Key Server,
http://martigny.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html

PGP Time-Stamping Service
http://www.surety.com/

Konrad Odell's crypto primer
http://metronet.com/~kon.crypt.html

N.M.Queen's intro to PGP
http://sun1.bham.ac.uk.N.M.Queen/pgp/pgp.html

Adam Back's home page
http://www.dcs.exeter.ac.uk/~aba

--
-ed falk, sun microsystems
fa...@sun.com
If you can't say "fuck", you can't say "fuck the government"
--Lenny Bruce

Nat Queen

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Mar 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/2/96

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In article <4gv7bl$h...@arcadia.informatik.uni-muenchen.de>, Sven Buschke

<mailto:buschkea@> wrote:
>
> Does anyone have a good link to manual page, where the principles of PGP

> are explained? It's all complete new to me. In this Newsgroup are too few
> articles.

Try the first few links on my PGP page:

http://sun1.bham.ac.uk/N.M.Queen/pgp/pgp.html

-Nat

--
Dr. N.M. Queen | Phone: +44 121 414 6590. Fax: +44 121 414 3389
School of Math. & Stat. | Public key available for PGP-encrypted e-mail:
University of Birmingham | finger -l n...@for.mat.bham.ac.uk; or from WWW
Birmingham B15 2TT, U.K. | home page: http://sun1.bham.ac.uk/N.M.Queen/

David Oswald

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Mar 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/2/96

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>Sven Buschke (buschkea) wrote:
>: Hello!

>: Does anyone have a good link to manual page, where the principles of PGP

>: are explained? It's all complete new to me. In this Newsgroup are too few
>: articles.

>: Please Reply to "Sven.B...@extern.lrz-muenchen.de"
>: Thank you, Sven.

What ever happened to using Lycos, the World Wide Web Worm, Yahoo,
Starting Point, etc.?

From your favorite browser type "http://www.lycos.com"

Then type into the search window "PGP" and click on "Search"

Presto... you'll have more links than anyone could hope to place in a
response message.

--
David Oswald ... dos...@xmission.com ... http://www.xmission.com/~doswald
I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men,
and German to my horse. -- Charles V of France