Post Your Public Keys

Postby **Snorkasaurus** » 09 Sep 2015, 18:43

For Linux there are lots of alternatives.

s.

YouTube · Postby **dedanna1029** » 09 Sep 2015, 18:46

I'm sure, but will they see the certificate I've already generated?

Postby **Snorkasaurus** » 09 Sep 2015, 18:59

dedanna1029 wrote:I'm sure, but will they see the certificate I've already generated?

Any reasonably current GPG should be able to import your existing certs regardless of OS or frontend GUI.

GPG is supposed to be OpenPGP compliant which is not the same as PGP (even though some references incorrectly use the term PGP instead of OpenPGP). So unless you are mixing GPG with versions of PGP that are more than a decade old, you have nothing to worry about. :-)

s.

YouTube · Postby **dedanna1029** » 10 Sep 2015, 01:30

Good. Thank you!

YouTube · Postby **dedanna1029** » 22 Sep 2015, 22:35

Good gods, this thing's long:

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Postby **Snorkasaurus** » 22 Sep 2015, 22:39

Oh wait, when sharing your key you should include the dashed lines at the top and bottom. :-)
s.

Postby **viking60** » 23 Sep 2015, 15:00

Stupid question:
After that key stuff is done how does the email work. Can only people that have your key send you mails? Can you send to everyone? How does it affect the mail stuff.
I mean the safest thing is not to allow anyone to send to you, but if they have to come here and download the key; that would pretty much be the same thing..

How does it work?

Postby **Snorkasaurus** » 23 Sep 2015, 16:21

Basically the way it works with email is...

You come here and get my public key (or from a keyserver)
You import my public key to your keyring
You use my public key to encrypt a message and send it to me
I use my private key to decrypt the message and read it

You may also encrypt a message to multiple keys, and might want to always encrypt to your own key so that you can decrypt it later. The real deficiency is in the available client applications. On Windows there is Claws Mail, which I think comes with gpg4win but is not installed by default. It has some encryption-related features built right in which allows for encryption/decryption/verification right in a message window. Unfortunately the configuration of Claws Mail is a little unruly and I don't like some of the way the GUI is laid out. Some people like to use a notification tray icon [Kleopatra or PGP] with a text editor to encrypt/decrypt, and copy/paste the contents in/out an email message. I kind of like Enigmail which is an extension for Thunderbird/SeaMonkey. It adds an OpenPGP menu to your mail application that lets you encrypt or sign from right in your "message window" and also shows status right in the message window. Here is an example of a test message I sent myself and signed.

Oh yes, that reminds me... I should also mention that key sets can also be used to prove who wrote a message (known as signing). For example, if you imported my public key as described above, you could verify that the following message is really from me

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Some people don't like the way that looks though, they find the extra text distracting I guess. As you can see though, if you are using an encryption-friendly client application (like my screenshot above) the extra text is not shown and just a status is given instead. It is important to understand that in the case of signing, the message is PLAIN TEXT and the signature only verifies that it was me who sent it. It is also possible to encrypt and sign at the same time.

Does that create more questions than it answers? :-)

s.

Postby **viking60** » 23 Sep 2015, 17:53

Eh...yes because you anticipate that I have a clue about mail.

When Hillary Clinton sends me a mail after I have successfully set up my client. And published my key etc etc. And she does not have the time nor wants to look for my keys to import.
She only wants me to head the NSA and sends me an offer to that effect.

Will I get that mail? Is the only difference that it is not signed and sealed?

Postby **Snorkasaurus** » 23 Sep 2015, 19:04

LAWL!

You will still get your top secret NSA job. Regular email is still handled the same way, and encrypted/signed email is like a layer on top of the existing regular email service. There are a few things to think about though...

- All headers, such as from, to, and subject are still plain text (I like to put "no subject" in the subject line to keep mail servers happy)
- very few people actually encrypt or sign email
- email servers have no idea what they are sending and just pass the info on blindly
- HTML formatting in encrypted messages is just awful, and plain text works much better
- I have never tested with alternate keyboard layouts and charsets, so if you [hint hint] are feeling motivated you could maybe use a non-us layout to see if your characters cause any problems.

As mentioned, encryption is obviously not widely used... mostly because there is a lot to learn first before you can start using it. So in my case 99% of the emails I send/receive are not encrypted or signed. When I do send/receive encrypted mail, I just use the extra options provided by TBird/Enigmail. Kind of like SSL being a layer on top of http... you just have to understand the little hints like a lock icon and yellow URL bar when you access https sites. If only OpenPGP email was as easy as https web sites!

s.

Postby **viking60** » 23 Sep 2015, 21:44

Ah got it

That means that I will still receive my spam but I can announce that if people want to be sure it is from me then they better download the key.

No reason not to try this then. As you can imagine I was so concerned about Hillary's E-mail practice that I thought I risked not to get the job.

I know a lot about spying- and it is worth a fortune to shut me up - so..yup I am pretty confident about that offer.

Now lemme see if I can get that encryption going....

...
Anything that works with thunderbird? Probably an irrelevant question ..reading up as we "speak"....
Ok Got Gnupg (was installed) and the Enigmail addon for Thunderbird....

...
Generating keys now... this is so exiting.. :pray:

still generating ... getting nervous ... why does it take so long :roll:

Ok Got the key but now I need to make a key to withdraw that key in case I loose it so that people do not continue using it....Monkey see monkey doo...
"Enigmail is ready for use thank you for using" :smug

Now I am trying to figure out where those keys are hiding :confused

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This was helpful.

Postby **viking60** » 23 Sep 2015, 23:00

Tried to send an ecnrypted mail to my gmail account and got "the recipient is not accepted, not found or cannot be trusted " :shock:

Ok bear with me I am learning here :coffee_smile:

I sent myself the key and clicked on the attachment ending with .asc
That automatically added the key to my gmail in thunderbird - and the green bar indicated that it was good and from me.
But where do we put the keys published here?

Oh wow There is this import from clipboard option; et voila you get accepted - dedanna is down; one to go....
:drummer

Got them!

Seems to work fine but I wonder what happens if I send a signature to Microsoft outlook`? :think:

bjoernvold.com

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