Introduction to PGP
You cannot claim to have set up comprehensive security if you do not know how to work with PGP. This is a very important chapter, and in general, the section on PGP is one of the most important in the course.
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is one of the most reliable tools for encryption, which we will discuss. The PGP technology will help you securely encrypt both emails and any other text messages.
To date, there is no known way to crack data encrypted with PGP. The technology has no serious vulnerabilities, and its algorithm cannot be subjected to "brute force" cracking even by modern supercomputers.
You may have encountered information in the media about critical vulnerabilities in PGP, but these are not related to the reliability of encryption, but only to the implementation of PGP in a number of email clients. We will discuss this in more detail in the chapter dedicated to email encryption.
The PGP technology not only has the highest cryptographic strength, but it also has another advantage – it is completely free. Its creator, Philip Zimmermann, made the code publicly available, for which we owe him a great deal of thanks.
To work with PGP encryption, it is necessary for the software to use PGP to be installed on both parties' devices, so if your friend/partner/colleague does not yet know about PGP, send them a link to this material.
Using PGP
Initially, you will need to create a PGP key. The key is created using a special program, which we will teach you to work with in this section.
I do not want to delve into the theory of encryption, but there is one simple truth you need to remember: a PGP key consists of a pair of public and private keys. The public key can only be used to encrypt information, while it can only be decrypted with the private key from the pair.
Thus, using the public key, you will not be able to decrypt even what you have encrypted with it. Please read the last two paragraphs again and remember this information.
You can extract your public key from the key manager to your hard drive and share it with your interlocutors; moreover, it can be opened through any simple text editor and transmitted in text form.
Is it possible to publish your public key, for example, on your blog or website? Yes, many do this; it does not pose any threat to the security of communication, but from the perspective of anonymity, there are some risks of being identified. By intercepting an encrypted message and having your public key, malicious actors will understand that this message was encrypted with your public key, and therefore, it is addressed to you.