On 05/18/2012 03:13 PM, Basil Chupin wrote:
Sounds reasonable, but..... if I send an e-mail encrypted with my secret private key and the person at the other end has the public key then surely if my message is intercepted by anyone who has that public key then it can be read by anyone who has that public key. The "interceptor" may not be able to read a response to my original post, only I can do that with my secret and private key, but they surely would be able to read whatever *I* post. No? :-) .
You have it wrong.... If you want to send an encrypted message to someone you encrypt the message using *their* public key and they un-encrypt using their *private* key. You *sign* messages with your private key and the signature is checked with your public key.
(There has to be more to this than I have read so far........ just like my question about VirtualBox which seems to be understood on how it works by everyone except by me :-) .)
The details of public/private key encryption is interesting. in email.... When the text portion of a message is encrypted it is encrypted using a one time, two-way key (same key is used to encrypt and un-encrypt). Now, if you have 3 recipients that key is encrypted 3 times using the public keys for each of the recipients. They (their client) then un-encrypt the key and that key is then used to un-encrypt the message. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org