[ale] emailing public dsa key (good, bad or ugly?)

[Chris Woodfield]

That is incorrect - the either key can encrypt or decrypt, but one  
can only decrypt a message encrypted by its counterpart. That's how  
you "sign" a document/email with GPG - you encrypt a hash of the file  
with your private key, creating the GPG signature. Recipients then  
decrypt the hash using your public key, then compare the hash with  
the file. If they match, that proves (in theory) that the hash could  
only have been encrypted with the sender's private key, thus the  
document/email was sent by that person.

</nitpick>

-C

On Jan 26, 2006, at 12:53 AM, James P. Kinney III wrote:

>
> The pub key can only encrypt. The private key can only decrypt. In  
> some
> situations, the required roles are reversed so the keys types are
> reversed. If you try to encrypt a string with your real private key  
> and
> then decrypt it with your pub key, you would likely get a failure  
> as the
> key types are not interchangeable.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> -- JK
>>
>>> what say ye all?  o.k. to email or scp it w/password for now.
>>>
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> -- 
> James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
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>
> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
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