Is simple and complex. If you ever study accounting in high school and
you were
thought about balncing account and double registration method of filing your
expenses and gains.
this is a similar issue wiht the keys, you have 2 keys as opposed to
one. One is
public and the other is private. One is for everyone out there that you design
access to. The other is for you and your system your secret key look for the
people holding your public and then they will have access to unecrypt an
encripted file. This can be e-mails, or just regular files.
Encripted mediums are used for a lot of things not just files/emails, but
connections, access to websites, VPN, authenticate browsers, instant message.
Etc.
If you had linux, you probably already have the tools you need
including a tool
called gpg which means gnu privacy guard. Also you might want to download a
front end such as gpgpme or gpa
(http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/related_software/gpa/index.html).
On windows you can still install gpg and also have a front end under WinPT
http://www.winpt.org/.
Quoting Sweet Coffee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
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.
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