Setting up a GPG keypair in OSX using GPGsuite Your GPG key pair will be generated & public key uploaded to they keyservers. Once you are happy with your passphrase, click generate key. A single hack of any of those sites could reveal your password, so encryption passwords are only for local use. This password is never for use with any online services such as websites. Also, my advice is to use a password you only use for encryption. Make sure it is a strong password & one you can remember. The passphrase is a vital part of your encryption as it unlocks your keypair for use. In these settings, select the email account you would like to use with GPG encryption, select the box to upload your public key (makes it much easier for people to correspond with you) and enter your passphrase. You will be presented with the following screen, showing you your Mac Mail email addresses. Open the application and click New in the top left corner. Next, head to your applications folder & select the newly installed GPG keychain application. If you use a free account such as Gmail you can still add it to your Mac Mail software & encrypt emails using that account. Make sure you have added the email account you want to start using with encryption as one of your Mac Mail accounts. The first thing you will want to set up are your keypairs. GPGpreferences icon in your Mac OS settings GPG Preferences pane Most people can just leave this set with the default values. This allows you to set your GPG preferences, such as update checking and the public keyserver you would like to use. Once installed you will have an extra option in your settings preference pane called GPG Preferences. If you are using Sierra or require cutting edge enhancements, opt for the beta package. You can also sign your emails with GPG Mail which confirms your email as authentic to the recipient.įirst, install GPGsuite using the. Much of the encryption process is automated once you setup your keypair, including downloading the keys of recipients you address your emails to. It allows you to manage & store your keys.Īlso in GPG suite you have GPG mail which integrates with the native mac mail client. The suite includes the GPG keychain which allows you to create your key-pair for your email address, and it also allows you to store the public keys of your recipients & to upload your public keys to public key servers. On OSX/ OS Sierra you can use the free & open source GPG Suite to install the tools required to start encrypting email. This allows encrypted communication between both parties. Both sender & receiver need to set up a keypair & share their public keys with each other. This password allows you to unlock your keys & use them to encrypt your email. I won’t go into the technicals of it, if you are interested there are a lot of free resources which will guide you through the technology.Įncryption also requires a password to be set when creating your key pair. The keys are paired so that both are required to encrypt & decrypt emails. It is important that your private (secret) key always remains private & you never share it with anyone. Each user generates a pair of keys, one private key remains secret and on the user’s computer, the other, known as a public key is free to distribute on the internet and allows you to pass it on to those you wish to communicate with. GPG is important for emails as it means that an email remains encrypted between the sender & the receiver. I Use RSA 4096 for my keys which is possibly a little overkill, but I like to future proof when learning. These keys use a high level of encryption. Both PGP and GPG are interchangeable so you can use either protocol. We will use GPG which stands for GNU Privacy Guard and is a compatible free software equivalent of Symantec’s proprietary encryption algorithm. As part of my cybersecurity posts I’ve decided to write briefly about PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption of email.
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