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Miscellaneous => Forum Games => Topic started by: BriGuy92 on August 15, 2013, 12:23:53 AM

Title: The power of encryption!
Post by: BriGuy92 on August 15, 2013, 12:23:53 AM
The internet is a wacky, dangerous place. To keep your sensitive messages away from prying eyes, several encryption schemes have been developed. One well-known method of encryption is the public/private-key method. In this system, the sender and recipient of a message both have a public (available to anyone) and a private (kept secret, for the owner's use only) key. To send a secret message using this system, the sender encrypts the message with the recipient's public key, and the recipient decrypts the message with his own private key. This way, only the designated recipient can read the message.

One implementation of the public/private-key scheme is PGP, which stands for "Pretty Good Protection." A program to generate and store PGP keys, as well as encrypt messages, can be found at http://gpg4win.org. This program (actually a suite of programs) runs on Windows. (If you're using Linux or Mac, I'm not 100% sure what you can use, but I probably can find out if need be.)

Since a program which allows you to easily encrypt messages is so easily available, let's have a secret-message party! Get yourself a key, and send some messages to people! You'll need their public keys, of course. The fun will be in figuring out who a message is for, and whether or not they're willing to share it once it's decrypted.

My public key is as follows:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.21-beta27 (MingW32)
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=6q/w
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Have fun securing your data!
Title: Re: The power of encryption!
Post by: zelkova on August 17, 2013, 05:02:43 PM
If anyone is interested in an easy to use application that facilitates secure communication and file sharing using the PGP protocoal, Retroshare would be the way to go. Just thought i'd mention it.