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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
When Michael Lucas' PGP & GPG: E-Mail for the Practical Paranoid was published in 2006, I was excited. The use of cryptography, once extremely common among nerds, saw an inexplicable decline after the turn of the millennium. These days even the most technically literate of my friends don't use it, not only because they don't see the purpose, but also because there are few decent web resources for all the theory around public and private keys. I hoped Lucas' book would help restore interest in cryptography.
The first two chapters introduce the concepts behind encryption. The book comes from No Starch Press, so the intended audience is a technical one, comfortable with reading such a fairly rigorous computing manual. His book does not take care of the need for a more general introduction to encryption. And he assumes that if you've bought the book, you've already decided that you need encryption. I thought it would have been nice if he had talked about why encryption of communications is important, for example by citing the old adage that encryption is just an envelope over the postcard that is e-mail. The book is also for an American audience. I get most of Lucas' obscure jokes and cultural references, but for English-speaking readers from other countries the tone of Lucas' writing must be somewhat irritating.
In instructing the reader how to actually use cryptography in daily life, Lucas describes two implementations of the OpenPGP standard. The first is PGP, the proprietary program that costs money, is controlled by a single corporation, and whose source code is not publicly available, but which Lucas feels is best for those with limited computing skills and a need for technical support. The second program is GnuPG, the Free Software tool that is freely available and whose source code can be audited by anyone, but which might be challenging to use for some. He does talk about the WinPT graphical interface for GnuPG on Windows, but it's a pity that he doesn't describe Linux key management interfaces like Seahorse. As the subtitle promises, Lucas does a good job of showing you how to work encryption into common e-mail clients like Outlook and Thunderbird.
Lucas tries hard to encourage good cryptographic practice. The final chapter talks about the limitations of encryption in the face of poor keysigning, or software or hardware compromise (but where's the mention of TEMPEST?).
If you're a technical person who is committed to implementing encrypted e-mail in your personal life or small company, Lucas' guide is a decent read.
The first two chapters introduce the concepts behind encryption. The book comes from No Starch Press, so the intended audience is a technical one, comfortable with reading such a fairly rigorous computing manual. His book does not take care of the need for a more general introduction to encryption. And he assumes that if you've bought the book, you've already decided that you need encryption. I thought it would have been nice if he had talked about why encryption of communications is important, for example by citing the old adage that encryption is just an envelope over the postcard that is e-mail. The book is also for an American audience. I get most of Lucas' obscure jokes and cultural references, but for English-speaking readers from other countries the tone of Lucas' writing must be somewhat irritating.
In instructing the reader how to actually use cryptography in daily life, Lucas describes two implementations of the OpenPGP standard. The first is PGP, the proprietary program that costs money, is controlled by a single corporation, and whose source code is not publicly available, but which Lucas feels is best for those with limited computing skills and a need for technical support. The second program is GnuPG, the Free Software tool that is freely available and whose source code can be audited by anyone, but which might be challenging to use for some. He does talk about the WinPT graphical interface for GnuPG on Windows, but it's a pity that he doesn't describe Linux key management interfaces like Seahorse. As the subtitle promises, Lucas does a good job of showing you how to work encryption into common e-mail clients like Outlook and Thunderbird.
Lucas tries hard to encourage good cryptographic practice. The final chapter talks about the limitations of encryption in the face of poor keysigning, or software or hardware compromise (but where's the mention of TEMPEST?).
If you're a technical person who is committed to implementing encrypted e-mail in your personal life or small company, Lucas' guide is a decent read.
Really great content! It's definitely showing it's age at this point (copyright 2006) but you can fill in the gaps pretty well by following the information provided here. Screenshots are outdated and the applications are different but the functionality is the same.