PGP: Pretty Good Privacy

• Authors: Simson Garfinkel;Deborah Russell
• Venue: PGP: Pretty Good Privacy
• Year: 1996

From the Publisher:Use of the Internet is expanding beyond anyone's expectations.As corporations, government offices, and ordinary citizensbegin to rely on the information highway to conduct business,they are realizing how important it is to protect theircommunications -- both to keep them a secret from pryingeyes and to ensure that they are not altered during transmission. Encryption, which until recently was an esoteric field of interest only to spies, the military, and a few academics, provides a mechanism for doing this.PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is a free and widely available encryption program that lets you protect files and electronic mail. Written by Phil Zimmermann and released in 1991, PGP works on virtually every platform and has become very popular both in the U.S. and abroad. Because it usesstate-of-the-art public key cryptography, PGP can be used toauthenticate messages, as well as keep them secret. With PGP,you can digitally "sign" a message when you send it. Bychecking the digital signature at the other end, the recipientcan be sure that the message was not changed duringtransmission and that the message actually came from you.PGP offers a popular alternative to U.S. government initiatives likethe Clipper Chip because, unlike Clipper, it does not allow the government or any other outside agency access to your secret keys.PGP: Pretty Good Privacy by Simson Garfinkel is both a readabletechnical user's guide and a fascinating behind-the-scenes lookat cryptography and privacy. Part I, "PGP Overview," introduces PGP andthe cryptography that underlies it. Part II, "Cryptography History andPolicy," describes the history of PGP -- its personalities, legalbattles, and other intrigues; it also provides background on the battlesover public key cryptography patents and the U.S. government exportrestrictions, and other aspects of the ongoing public debates aboutprivacy and free speech. Part III, "Using PGP," describes how to usePGP: protecting files and email, creating and using keys, signingmessages, certifying and distributing keys, and using key servers.Part IV, "Appendices," describes how to obtain PGP from Internet sites,how to install it on PCs, UNIX systems, and the Macintosh, and otherbackground information. The book also contains a glossary, abibliography, and a handy reference card that summarizes all of the PGPcommands, environment variables, and configuration variables.