Monday's Mac Gadget by John F. Braun Make Your Internet Traffic Secure Monday May 3rd, 1999     PGPfreeware 6.0.2 (Free until further notice) Network Associates In the beginning, TCP/IP was created. It let all sorts of different computers talk to one another using a common protocol, and it was good. However, TCP/IP wasn't designed with security in mind, so any data you send has the potential to be viewed by someone other than the intended recipient, using a tool such as OTSessionWatcher. What to do? PGPfreeware employs both public (dual) key and secret (single) key cryptography to keep your information secure. The documentation provides an explanation of this technology, as well as references to other works for the curious. In a nutshell, a public key system relies on two keys, a public key and a private key, both of which are needed to complete an operation. These operations are encryption and signing. If a message is encrypted with someone's public key, only their private key can be used to decrypt it. Not even the sender can decrypt the message, since they don't have the required private key. Likewise, someone can sign message contents with their private key, and the recipient can use the corresponding public key to verify the signature. Since only the sender has the private key used for signing, this method can verify the identity of the sender. Compared to early version of PGP, which used a clunky command-line interface, this version is thoroughly Mac-like. The PGPkeys application is where you can create your own key pair, and manage the public keys of friends and associates. An excellent drag-and-drop interface allows you to simply drag your public key to a text field in another application, ready to send to others. You can also drag the text representation of someone else's public key into PGPkeys, and it will take care of all the nasty decoding and place the key in your keyring. PGPkeys can also send your public key to a PGP key server, as well as download public keys from this server. You have several options available when you want to perform encryption and signing. An add-on called PGPmenu provides a menu, available from any application, which will let you perform encryption, signing, decryption and signature verification operations on the selected file or data. Another add-on called PGPtools presents a graphical, drag-and-drop interface for performing these operations. Finally, a plug-in for Eudora offers email integration, by providing new icons for encryption and signing operations. An added bonus is the PGPdisk application, which will let you create an encrypted virtual disk, great for protecting sensitive files. Don't take a chance with your sensitive data. Check out PGPfreeware today. Useful Links PGPfreeware Home Page PGP International Home Page PGPmenu Can Be Made Available from Selected Applications PGPtools Provides a Graphics Interface Eudora Plug-In Lets You Encrypt and Sign from Within Eudora Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you with those cool things that we all just have to have on our Macs. Shareware, Freeware, Postcardware, Emailware, and even commercial apps, Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you find and use the best of these programs. John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on all aspects of communications technology. He has several degrees that claim he knows what he's doing when it comes to computers. After watching co-workers reinstall Windows, search for device drivers, and experience other horrors during the day, he's glad that he comes home to a Mac (compatible) computer. Have any comments, suggestions, or favorite Gadgets? Drop John a line at You can also Post Your Comments below. Current Monday's Mac Gadget Want to Supercharge Your Dock? Check Out Todos! - August 21st Worried About Your Mac Getting Jacked? Get JackSMS - June 12th Want iChat with Tabs? Try Chax! - April 3rd Visit Monday's Mac Gadget Archives for more great Mac Gadgets!