Monday, August 25, 2003

New E-Mail Address

I'm in the midst of moving e-mail from yahoo over to my actual domain (wuphonsreach at wuphonsreach dot org). As a result, I'm also in the process of setting up a new GPG key.

There is an add-in package for mozilla mail called Enigmail that makes use of the command line GPG to do the encryption/signing. Here's the short list of how to set it up:

1) download GPG binaries for Windows, version that I got was 1.2.3

2) Extract the contents of GPG to somewhere on your HD, preferably into a folder that you will be backing up on a regular basis. For the security minded, you may wish to place this folder inside of an encrypted volume (I use PGPDisk).

3) Add the GPG folder to your PATH= environment variables. Under Windows2000/XP this is done by right-clicking on My Computer, going to Properties - Advanced - Environment Variables and adding the GPG folder to the end of the existing PATH= line (don't forget to put a semi-colon in prior to the new folder).

4) Look at readme.w32 in the GPG folder. Create the registry key HKCU/Software/GNU and a sub-key called GNUPG then create a string value called "HomeDir" and give it the path to your GPG folder (e.g. "C:/MyStuff/GNUPG") - note the forward slashes.

5) Go to the GPG folder, run "gpg --gen-key" and follow the prompts. The FAQ is useful, but recommended settings are "DSA and ElGamal", 1024 or 2048 bits, and 1 year expiration.

6) Use the command "gpg --export -a" to spit your public key (never publish your private key!) out to the screen (or you may want to pipe it into a text file) and give your public key to your friends.

7) To make it easier for people to find your key, go to MIT PGP Public Key Server and publish your public key.

8) At this point, I'm off to configure Enigmail. (Currently, I'm looking at the help file.)

posted by Wuphon's at 11:56 PM