Getting Started with Security

PGP Two great things about PGP software is that the privacy is a whole lot better than "pretty good", and it's free. Here are a couple of options:

I can recommend the basic book on PGP, PGP: Pretty Good Privacy by Simson Garfinkel, although there are many more available that are more recent. There's also lots of information on the Web.

If you're looking for something more advanced on the whole topic of digital certificates, encryption, and Internet security in general, I can very highly recommend the outstanding Web Security, Privacy, and Commerce by Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford.

Look up anyone's PGP public key on MIT's public key server.

Lock The Internet is a great medium for keeping in touch with one another, but it is also inherently insecure. In other words, a clever snoop can eavesdrop on your communications if you don't take precautions. E-mail is particularly vulnerable, but fortunately, there is an easy solution.

Back in the early 1970's, the technique of public key cryptography was invented, and now it is easily available to you through Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP. Public key cryptography is based on my having two keys: a public key that I make available to the world, and a private key that I keep secret. Anyone who wishes to send me private e-mail, has an e-mail program that can understand PGP, and has my PGP public key, can encrypt the message and send it to me in the knowledge that it won't be read by anyone else as it travels across the Net. Another nice feature is that I can digitally sign any e-mail I send to you using my private key and you can verify that it did, in fact, come from me.

Once you get the PGP software installed and running, you'll then need to download my public keys. I have two public keys: one for e-mail to me at the White Spot (North) and another for e-mail to me at Sun Microsystems. If you have recent versions of either the PGP.com freeware or the GNU Privacy Guard, download the versions below that use the PGP 6.x extensions.

My wspot.net Public Key
Key ID: 7D46039A
Get It: My wspot.net public key, with PGP 6.x extensions
My wspot.net public key, for older versions of PGP
PGP Fingerprint: EA2C 43E3 C408 D755 3803 26D8 CE88 71B3 7D46 039A
My sun.com Public Key
Key ID: DB49A4FE
Get It: My sun.com public key, with PGP 6.x extensions
My sun.com public key, for older versions of PGP
PGP Fingerprint: 228C 26DE 8AAF E150 B3DC 26F4 FE90 34DA DB49 A4FE