Description
Use of the Internet is expanding beyond anyone’s expectations. As corporations, government offices, and ordinary citizens begin to rely on the information highway to conduct business, they are realizing how important it is to protect their communications — both to keep them a secret from prying eyes and to ensure that they are not altered during transmission. Encryption, which until recently was an esoteric field of interest only to spies, the military, and a few academics, provides a mechanism for doing this. PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is a free and widely available encryption program that lets you protect files and electronic mail. Written by Phil Zimmermann and released in 1991, PGP works on virtually every platform and has become very popular both in the U.S. and abroad. Because it uses state-of-the-art public key cryptography, PGP can be used to authenticate messages, as well as keep them secret. With PGP, you can digitally “sign” a message when you send it. By checking the digital signature at the other end, the recipient can be sure that the message was not changed during transmission and that the message actually came from you. PGP offers a popular alternative to U.S. government initiatives like the Clipper Chip because, unlike Clipper, it does not allow the government or any other outside agency access to your secret keys.
- Publisher : O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (January 10, 1995)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 430 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1565920988
- ISBN-13 : 978-1565920989
- Item Weight : 1.6 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 0.97 x 9.19 inches
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.