Data encryption and Ubuntu, Part III

Hamish Taylor
Sunday, 30 November 2008 02:30

Opinion and Analysis

This is the easiest part, as now you have all of the pieces in place to do this. Simply create a new email, type in their email address (corresponding to the address of their Public Key).

Type in the Subject Line, but note that this will remain UNENCRYPTED!

Type in the body of the email message. Attach any necessary files; you don't need to encrypt them separately, they will be encrypted as part of the body of the email.

Now go to the top and click on Security. Select PGP Encrypt. You can also digitally "sign" the message as well, which verifies that it has come from you and remains untampered on the way through. Digitally "signing" a message does NOT encrypt it in any way.

When you click Send, you'll be asked for your Private Key password. This is just so that the system "unlocks" the PGP encryption sub-system to allow you access.

That's it! Now you just have to wait for your recipient to decrypt and read your message.

When you get an encrypted message, you'll be prompted to decrypt it using your Private Key password. In Evolution, the message will be seamlessly decrypted directly in front of you, as will any attachments. There's no need to download the message and open it in any other application (which is the only way that I could get FireGPG to work). That's what I like about using Evolution for encryption/decryptions, it's just so easy.

Now you are able to send and recieve encrypted emails and decrypt them easily. In the next article, I'll look at S/MIME and X.509 certificates, which are just an alternative encryption system to PGP.

As always, please leave feedback, comments and questions. However, I will only respond to comments left on iTWire article discussion forums. The direct link for this article is here.