PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid

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PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid

by Michael W. Lucas (Goodreads Author)

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 13 ratings · 2 reviews

OpenPGP is the most widely used email encryption standard in the world. It is based on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) as originally developed by Phil Zimmermann. The OpenPGP protocol defines standard formats for encrypted messages, signatures, and certificates for exchanging public keys.

PGP & GPG is an easy-to read, informal tutorial for implementing electronic privacy on t...more

Paperback, 208 pages

Published April 25th 2006 by No Starch Press (first published April 1st 2006)

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Feb 04, 2009 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars

When Michael Lucas' PGP & GPG: E-Mail for the Practical Paranoid was published in 2006, I was excited. The use of cryptography, once extremely common among nerds, saw an inexplicable decline after the turn of the millennium. These days even the most technically literate of my friends don't use it, not only because they don't see the purpose, but also because there are few decent web resources for all the theory around public and private keys. I hoped Lucas' book would help restore interest i...more When Michael Lucas' PGP & GPG: E-Mail for the Practical Paranoid was published in 2006, I was excited. The use of cryptography, once extremely common among nerds, saw an inexplicable decline after the turn of the millennium. These days even the most technically literate of my friends don't use it, not only because they don't see the purpose, but also because there are few decent web resources for all the theory around public and private keys. I hoped Lucas' book would help restore interest in cryptography.

The first two chapters introduce the concepts behind encryption. The book comes from No Starch Press, so the intended audience is a technical one, comfortable with reading such a fairly rigorous computing manual. His book does not take care of the need for a more general introduction to encryption. And he assumes that if you've bought the book, you've already decided that you need encryption. I thought it would have been nice if he had talked about why encryption of communications is important, for example by citing the old adage that encryption is just an envelope over the postcard that is e-mail. The book is also for an American audience. I get most of Lucas' obscure jokes and cultural references, but for English-speaking readers from other countries the tone of Lucas' writing must be somewhat irritating.

In instructing the reader how to actually use cryptography in daily life, Lucas describes two implementations of the OpenPGP standard. The first is PGP, the proprietary program that costs money, is controlled by a single corporation, and whose source code is not publicly available, but which Lucas feels is best for those with limited computing skills and a need for technical support. The second program is GnuPG, the Free Software tool that is freely available and whose source code can be audited by anyone, but which might be challenging to use for some. He does talk about the WinPT graphical interface for GnuPG on Windows, but it's a pity that he doesn't describe Linux key management interfaces like Seahorse. As the subtitle promises, Lucas does a good job of showing you how to work encryption into common e-mail clients like Outlook and Thunderbird.

Lucas tries hard to encourage good cryptographic practice. The final chapter talks about the limitations of encryption in the face of poor keysigning, or software or hardware compromise (but where's the mention of TEMPEST?).

If you're a technical person who is committed to implementing encrypted e-mail in your personal life or small company, Lucas' guide is a decent read.(less)

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Dec 12, 2012 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ever since working with OpenPGP, I instantly fell in love with it and helped spread the word around whenever I could for people who wanted a more secure method of communication via email. Just recently, a friend wanted to learn more about this awesome email encryption technology and wanted to know where to actually begin his journey. I was looking over at some books on Amazon and decided to go with PGP & GPG: Email for the practical Paranoid by Michael Lucas. It had good reviews and the book...more Ever since working with OpenPGP, I instantly fell in love with it and helped spread the word around whenever I could for people who wanted a more secure method of communication via email. Just recently, a friend wanted to learn more about this awesome email encryption technology and wanted to know where to actually begin his journey. I was looking over at some books on Amazon and decided to go with PGP & GPG: Email for the practical Paranoid by Michael Lucas. It had good reviews and the book was only a little over 200 pages so it’s not too overwhelming. After borrowing the book and reading it for myself, I can definitely say that it can help someone a whole lot to begin realizing the benefits of utilizing OpenPGP for secure email communications. It won’t make you an expert by any means but I don’t think most users care. If you’re already an expert, I don’t think you should be reading this book anyways because its all about the basics here. if you have no idea on what OpenPGP is, then go ahead and do a little research online first. If you are then interested, come back and pick this book up.

What the author does here is give you a taste of what OpenPGP can do for you as far as email communications is concerned. He explains the essentials such as confidentiality, authenticity and non-repudiation and most important of all, what public and private keys are in an asymmetric encryption scheme. The author does a good job in explaining things without really over complicating it. The good news with OpenPGP is that once you grasp the basic concepts of how it works, the rest becomes fairly easy to catch on. The author goes into great detail about The Web of Trust and how key signing works. This is the area where it might scare potential users away. However, while embedding yourself into The Web of Trust system can be beneficial to you and the overall OpenPGP scheme, it is absolutely not necessary at all if all you want to do is trade secure emails between known party members. If you are going to invest heavily in OpenPGP, then yes, you should learn all you can about The Web of Trust, especially if you will be trading secure emails with people you have never met before.

In the book, the author gives example of how to use OpenPGP with a couple of products. First is Symantec’s own PGP Desktop software. The basics to get the software up and running is included such as generating you own key pair, importing and exporting your key pair, signing other public key’s and generating a revocation certificate. Second, the author explains how to install and use OpenPGP in both Windows and a Linux environment via the command line for the latter. He chooses to show how to get things up and running with the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client with the Enigmail plugin. Configuration wise, not much else is mentioned.

Like I mentioned earlier, this book won’t make you an expert with OpenPGP. What it will help in is getting users up to date with all the terminologies and concept behind the technology so that other users such as myself can have a meaningful discussion with them without getting the deer in the headlight response! As a strong believer in OpenPGP and email encryption in general, this book is fantastic for me to recommend to people who want more information on the subject but not caring for the “mathematics” part of it.(less)

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About Michael W. Lucas

Michael W. Lucas is the author of several critically-acclaimed nonfiction books and assorted short fiction. He was on the Internet before the Web existed, and now works for an independent telecommunications wholesaler in Michigan.

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