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Pretty Good Privacy

The pleasures of instant communication can vanish with one privacy breach in your interactions. Risk of digital eavesdropping by competitors, peers or total strangers should push you into fortifying email messages with encryption. But the Internet is not one for traditional cryptography, with personal meetings and specialised equipment. The only viable option then is Digital Certificates or Signatures under Public Key Encryption.

Public key encryption works with a private and a public key. Popular methods are S/MIME (Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) and the iterations of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). With PGP, your public key encrypts every mail sent to you, whereas only your private key is used to decode the message, once received. It enforces the greatest security levels possible in encryption, with some keys even starting at 128 bits.

Installation
PGP is available as freeware and is very easy to use. Visit either http://www.pgpi.org or http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html to download PGP. Before installation, check on your operating system, to decide on the right download. The freeware plugs into majority of email programs automatically. In case you don't have a direct plugin, select an add-on program from the site. With Eudora, Lotus or Outlook, plugin should be simple.

System requirements: 10 MB of disk space and PC with 100 MHz/16 MB RAM is adequate. Download time is about 45 minutes. Installation is quick, under 10 minutes and you are taken through the setup process in iterations. Stay with the default settings if you're a novice.

During installation you can create your key public and private key pair. Simply go with the prompts to do so. Finally, you will also need to set up a password to update the keys and encrypt data.

After installation, run through the program. The central part contains PGP keys, to manage key rings, passwords and more. In case you already have a compatible email client, the look might change marginally. Eudora Lite, for instance, displays a PGP menu item with the required information and also some new icons to work on it.

Encrypting Files And Notes
For encrypting files, you first need to distribute your public key. Distribution can be via a public certificate server or by including it in an (unencrypted) email message. Yet another way is to export or copy your public key to a text file.

To send your public key to a certificate server, connect to the Internet and Start PGPkeys. On the displayed list of public keys, select the key you want to post. Go to the server menu, click on the 'Select the Send To' option and key in a server address, or click on the default one. Once your key pair is created, you will be asked to post your keys to a default server.

Next, include your public key in an email message. Start PGPkeys, choose your key pair and copy and paste on to the page in your email editor. Also add your digital signature, when sending your public key. The recipient can verify your signature with the key you provide to authenticate the information. Alternately, you can also export your public key to a file.

You can collect public keys in three ways. Getting it from a public certificate server is one, another way is to add the public key to your key ring straight from an email message. Or you can import the public key from a shared file.

For obtaining the key from a public certificate server(key server), start PGPkeys and choose Search from the Server menu. Go to the 'Search for Keys On' box, select the location or server to search. Key in the necessary search criteria to locate the user’s public key. When you find the public key of a particular user, add it to the PGPkeys window by dragging it.

How do you go about adding public keys from email messages? Firstly, make sure that the sender includes the public key in an email message. If your email application is not supported by the plug-ins, add the public key to the key ring by copying the block of text that represents the public key. Next, start PGPkeys and choose 'Paste' from the Edit menu. Click import on the 'Select Keys' dialog box which appears.

To import a public key from a shared file, start PGPkeys, copy the block of text that represents the public key and paste it into the PGPkeys window.

Your keys are ready for use now. Select a full encryption or digital signature from your e-mail client and send a message. If you have already registered your key on the key server, look for the public key that matches with the email address. In turn, PGP will decrypt all incoming messages. You can turn it on only when required and can change the settings to suit your needs.

PGP is a smooth tool but remember that your encrypted messages will mean nothing to users who do not have encryption.

Yagna Balaji
[email protected]

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