[guispeak] Re: curiosity question

  • From: "Laura Eaves" <leaves1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <guispeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 09:42:13 -0500

Hi Rick --
That is a PGP signed message -- that means it is signed with an encrypted special signature that is unique to that message.
There is a reason why some people want this type of signature -- it kind of proves that the mail is from them, and if someone else tries to modify the message and resend it as if it were posted by the original sender, then a simple verification can be done, which involves checking a key that is located on a secure server somewhere, and typing in a password, and since the encryption hashes the whole message to generate the signature, modifying the message will cause the signature not to match the contents of the message. So it is easy to detect a fraud.


Sorry for the obscure description. I admit it isn't very good. I joined the PGP beginners list and learned how to create and export a personal key, sign and / or encrypt a message that could be decrypted by the receiver by entering his/her password (which means that person would have to have a key also and the sender would have to specify the person's id, but passwords are all private and known only to the person owning the key, and encrypted into the key.

This is all very messy, and it's been a while since I read through and installed the software and tried using it. But I just did it out of curiosity and not for any business reason. Having been a math/computer science major I wanted to get an idea how the system worked. Now as to who would use it, perhaps people that want their email and documents to be signed and perhaps encrypted and therefore only readable by a small number of people, even though, being sent via email, it is visible to other persons...

Anyway, I've probably stumbled all over the place and confused the issue. I never did join the advanced users list -- there are people who are really into this stuff, and the software and protocol changes quite a lot over time, so it's probably not at all the same as it was a few years ago. But they still seem to have the hash sha 1 at the top, so that hasn't changed.

Take care, and if you want to know more, send email to the persons post the peculiar messages! I dropped it a long time ago!
Have fun!
--le


----- Original Message ----- From: <Rick.Roderick@xxxxxx>
To: <guispeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 9:11 AM
Subject: [guispeak] curiosity question



Hi everyone,

I am curious about something.  At the beginning of somej message, I see:
hash sha1
What does this mean?

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