PGP Encryption

Posted by RPost on December 21st, 2022

Cryptography, today is crucial for secure the web, corporate cybersecurity, and blockchain innovation however it has been around for millennia. The main recorded utilization of codes - the "Caesar Box," - utilized by Julius Caesar to send secret messages to his commanders in the field, traces all the way back to around 100 BC. From that point forward, there have been a few headways in the field.

Today, we are zeroing in on PGP or "Very Great Protection"- a typical and generally utilized encryption technique to scramble messages and connections.

What is PGP Encryption?

First designed and developed in 1991 by Paul Zimmerman, PGP encryption is used to decrypt and encrypt emails and authenticate email messages through digital signatures and file encryption. Over the years, PGP has been improved and updated.

PGP uses a mix of encryption methodologies such as hashing, data compression, symmetric private-key cryptography, and asymmetric public-key cryptography. It is widely used to secure sensitive text files, emails, data files, directories, and even disk partitions!

How Does PGP Encryption Work?

PGP encryption includes changing over a plain instant message into an intricate code of muddled characters or codes, which is then unscrambled by the beneficiary utilizing PGP innovation. Both the shipper and the beneficiary will have a public PGP encryption key that can be imparted to everybody and a confidential key that is known exclusively to every client and ought to be kept mystery. The public key scrambles the message or record, while the confidential key unscrambles. The source should know the beneficiary's public key to send messages.

To simplify, let us consider a scenario. Alice wants to send an encrypted private email to Lucas. This is how it works when both Alice and Lucas use the PGP encryption mode.

• Lucas generates both a public and a private key and shares the public key with Alice.
• Alice encrypts the email using Lucas’ public key and sends the private encrypted message to Lucas.
• Lucas decrypts the message using his private key.

The math behind this is a three-step process:

Step 1: PGP generates a random, one-time-use, public encryption session key. As it’s a huge number, it cannot be easily guessed.

Step 2: In the backend, when the sender is about to send the email, the PGP technology encrypts the session key using the recipient’s public key, which protects the message while in transit. This public key is tied to the recipient’s identity and anyone can use this key to send a message to that particular recipient.

Step 3: The sender submits their session key, and the recipient can then decrypt the message using their private key.

For more information: https://rmail.com/learn/pgp-encryption