You will need my GPG public key, if you use GPG for doing any of the following:
- send encrypted emails to me
- send encrypted documents to me
- verify the authenticity (absence of tampering or modfication) of documents containing my digital signature
What is this GPG Public key ?GPG stands
for GNU Privacy Guard
, an excellent, public domain, FOSS
tool for ensuring privacy and security on the Internet (plus
more). GPG is distributed under GPL (GNU Public License, a
liberal license which grants you several liberties). GPG is
gratis software.
With GPG and my public key, you can encrypt any message, or
file, and send it to me. Only I can decrypt your message because only
I know the corresponding private key (aka "secret key") for
doing this decryption. The encryption cannot be broken by anybody
else. This is the principle of what is known as public key
cryptography (PKC). GPG does many more things, in addition to PKC.
The GPG web site
has lots of very
well written tutorials on cryptography, and security. You can also
download the GPG tool from this site. In general,
GPG comes free, with all standard Linux distributions (unlike that other
fliMSy-cluMSy-MeSsy operating system).
A neat overview and intro to GPG is here.
A well -organised catalogue of GPG commands is here.
Wish to learn more about cryptography, GPG and e-security ? Learn some cryptography from Prof. Partha. We can organise training programs on cryptography and GPG for you, at your institution and at your convenience. Send an e-mail to drpartha@gmail.com, for details.
To be absolutely "absolutely sure" : Follow the public key negotiation protocol
You will have to do the above authentication/confirmation tests only once, before you can start using Parha's public key. After you have installed and tested GPG, and after you have obtained and confirmed Partha's GPG public key: