
2
UNDERSTANDING OPENPGP
Now that you understand the
ideas behind basic encryption,
what makes OpenPGP so spe-
cial? Aside from the decade-old
lawsuit that freed up US encryption export
regulations, what happened to make the
computing world give OpenPGP so much attention? After
all, the cryptography underlying OpenPGP has been widely
deployed in a variety of applications and protocols, so that’s
not the secret.
OpenPGP’s secret is also what might be its most exciting
part: the whole concept of the Web of Trust. To use OpenPGP
well, you need to understand the Web of Trust.
This chapter introduces the ideas behind the Web of Trust
and some considerations ...