Teaching GnuPG to noobs

Faramir faramir.cl at gmail.com
Fri Jun 19 03:18:23 CEST 2015


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El 17-06-2015 a las 11:15, Robert J. Hansen escribió:
...
> The most common one I've found is not understanding the material as
> well as they think.  This tends to come through most in the
> metaphors an instructor uses.  For instance, I frequently encounter
> instructors who tell the class to imagine a lock with two keys, one
> that locks it and one that unlocks it, and they proceed to use that
> lock metaphor to explain crypto.
> 
> It's absurd.  Who in the class has ever seen a lock with two keys,
> one that locks it and one that unlocks?  The metaphor's ridiculous:
> the locks the students are familiar with require *no* keys to lock
> and only one key to unlock.

  I remember a tutorial that compared it to a lock and 1 key. I keep
the key, and send the lock to the person that will send messages to
me. The person writes the message, put it in a box, and locks the box
with the lock.
  I think that is very accurate, because I can encrypt messages to
your public key, even if I don't have a key of my own (of course, in
that case I can't sign the message, but that is a different operation).

  Maybe the magical wax could be useful to explain signatures? Or... I
can send you a sample of my DNA. Then I write a message, and sign it
using my blood as ink (ouch!), you get the message, run a DNA test...
The only way somebody can fake my signature would involve stealing a
sample of my blood, but then, it would be like stealing my private key.

  Best Regards

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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

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