When emailing your source

Im asking what it is, the pgp key that is

PGP stands for "Pretty Good Privacy" -- this refers to a program that was originally written by Phil Zimmermann in 1991. Phil is a cryptographer and anti-nuclear activist; he was worried even back then that emails used by his fellow anti-nuclear activists were being spied-upon by the U.S. government. Also, during that time, there was a proposal in the U.S. congress, which by all appearances, was going to pass, to legislate back-doors into all encryption software, allowing the U.S. government to spy on all encrypted traffic.

Phil devoted himself fulltime to developing PGP, and then gave it away. In doing so, he almost lost his house, as he missed 5 mortgage payments -- he came within a hair to ending up on the street.

PGP escaped the United States, and as as a result, Phil was subjected to an investigation for unlawful export of cryptographic material, which could have put him in prison.

An open-source version of PGP is called Gnu Privacy Guard, and it is actively developed and maintained by Werner Koch in Germany.

The idea behind PGP is that you can generate what is known as a PGP key-pair. A PGP key-pair consists of two keys: a public half, which can be widely distributed, and a private half, which you guard with your life.

People use your PGP public key to encrypt messages to you, and you use the private half of that key to decrypt those encrypted messages. In order to communicate securely, people exchange public keys. So, for example, if I wished to communicate with you securely, I'd send you my public key, and you would send me yours.

A public key looks like this:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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=nCwZ
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

An excellent version is called GPG4USB, and can be downloaded from the GPG4USB homepage: gpg4usb - project : home

This software contains executables for both Windows and Linux. It features a built-in editor, and is very easy to use.
 
Back
Top