On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 5:58 PM, jonas hedman <jonas.hed...@fripost.org> wrote: > On 15-11-14 17:45:47, Xu Wang wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I am learning more about PGP encryption with mutt, and am following this >> guide: >> http://dev.mutt.org/trac/wiki/MuttGuide/UseGPG >> >> There is a part which discusses about "also encrypt the message using >> the author's public key". This is very useful because now I can >> decrypt the message that I send (in case I want to see what I sent). I >> would like to understand more what happens. >> >> When I encrypt with public key of recipient *and* with my public key, >> is this to mean that I send two separate messages, one encrypted with >> recipient public key and a separate one with my public key? Or it is >> possible to send *one* message that both the recipient and me are >> capable of decrypting. I am trying to understand how this magic works. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Xu > > > You just send one message. If you have a Sent-dir then you can > decrypt it yourself at a later date, if you don't do this can decrypt it > afterwards. It's pretty handy at times. > > Basically, the encrypted messages gets two recipients and can be > decrypted by two private keys, yours and the person you sent the email > to.
Is this possible with all kinds of encryption? To me it is amazing that two different private keys can be used to decrypt the same message. Is there logic to explain why this works that is not specific to a particular algorithm? Kind regards, Xu
