Hello Everyone! This is a very informative discussion for me. I have never really had a clear understanding of Private Keys and digital signatures.
Can anyone recommend a very, very, very basic article or reading about it. I would like to essentially begin at the "bottom" with this subject and slowly read "up" to get a good grasp of what it is all about, what it looks like, how to adjust it, how to open things with it, how to use it (apply it/encrypt) and when it should be used. Please do not laugh. My knowledge about this is embarrassingly nil. SC On 6/20/05, Daniel Carrera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Peter Kupfer OOo wrote: > > > I am intrigued by the idea of digital signatures. > > > > Are there any open source (by that I mean free) digital signature services? > > Depends on what you mean by "digital signature". We can divide digital > signatures into two groups: > > 1) One group relies on a central authority (www.thawte.com) to verify > authenticity. That is, you know that a signature is mine because the > central authority verifies that it is. > > These cost money. You have to pay the central authority for the service. > > 2) The other group is de-centralized. You verify authenticity either > directly (e.g. we meet in person and I give you my public key) or in a > peer-to-peer sort of way (e.g. I give you Mary's public key which I > verified when she and I we met in person). > > For this system, take a look at Gnu Privacy Guard: > > http://gnupg.org/ > > If you are on Windows, you can skip right over to the Windows Privacy > Tools, which is a GUI front-end for GnuPG for Windows: > > http://winpt.sourceforge.net/en/ > > Cheers, > Daniel. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
