PGP public key?

mikeshn · 05-01-2002, 09:38 PM

Can someone can explain to me how PGP works? As I understand with PGP I can encrypte some information and send though email.. Right?

rshaw · 05-01-2002, 10:10 PM

pgp uses a pair of 'keys', 'public' and 'private' . if someone want's to encrypt a message to you they use your public key, that way only you can decrypt it with your private key+passphrase. you could give this public key directly to them or publish it on a pgp keyserver (pgp.mit.edu), that way anyone can look up your public key if they know your email.

mikeshn · 05-01-2002, 10:23 PM

ok .. but how can I encrypt?

rshaw · 05-01-2002, 11:12 PM

your best bet is to read gpg man page, due to the enormous amount of flags and options available. to encrypt a file with tom's public key it would look like

gpg -e -r tomskeyid <filetoencrypt>