Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
21–30 of 30 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#22I wouldn't call it 'ground-up' but you may find this useful:
https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#23If you have some pointers to Git internals explanation, similar to what you're looking for PGP/GnuPG, can you provide them? That would be useful and illustrative :) .
The Git Parable: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2009/05/19/the-git-parable.htm...
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#24https://www.nostarch.com/pgp.htm for the command line overview from a sysadmin perspective then look at the PGP/public key crypto section here (or read the whole thing) https://www.crypto101.io/
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#25I haven't read it, but "PGP: Source Code and Internals", by PGP's author Philip Zimmerman is worth a try. I've read his other book "Official PGP User's Guide" and learned quite a bit. https://www.amazon.com/PGP-Internals-Philip-R-Zimmermann/dp/...
Apparently you didn't learn the correct number of n's in Zimmermann ;)
(prz is very particular about his n's)
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#26If you have some pointers to Git internals explanation, similar to what you're looking for PGP/GnuPG, can you provide them? That would be useful and illustrative :) .
Scott Chacon's videos are priceless. (He's the co-author of the git book.) They explain exactly how git works internally in the simplest terms possible. Either or both of these:
Introduction to Git - talk by Scott Chacon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbLVvrb2-fY
Introduction to Git with Scott Chacon of GitHub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDR433b0HJY
The latter is newer but a bit longer.
Don't be fooled by the video names, these are introductions to the internals not just the interface.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#27> Understanding how git works internally "from the ground up" has been incredibly helpful in my everyday work;
I'm a very competent git user and don't know how blobs work (nor care). I haven't hit a problem scenario so far in which I had to dissect a blob.
> I feel like the same thing could apply to PGP/GnuPG.
If you don't know crypto, the internals of GNUPG are a bad way to learn it.
I would recommend reading a book, such as Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier.
Someone who reads that should be a much better informed, much more sophisticated user of crypto, whether it be an application like GNUPG or a some cryptographic programming library or communication protocol. A developer who reads that book should have the know-how to implement some crypto and spot some crypto-related security flaws.
How GNUPG stores things in various formats is less important than the semantics of those things: like what is a private key, what is a signature and so on. You need to understand what is happening when you, say, verify a signature; just not necessarily at the bit level.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#28This is a great pair of videos that intuitively explain Diffie-Helman key exchange and then the RSA algorithm in a way that requires no previous knowledge of cryptography:
"Public key cryptography - Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEBfamv-_do
"Public Key Cryptography: RSA Encryption Algorithm" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXB-V_Keiu8
Good coverage of the fundamentals before attempting a deeper understanding of PGP specifically.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#29It depends a lot on from which angle you want to understand it. There's a difference between "understanding the variety of command line options" vs. "understanding the meaning of the raw data structures". I learned quite a bit by looking up things in the RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880
I'm hoping that by understanding the meaning of the raw data structures, I can ask much more educated questions when I am faced with a new operation I want to perform using GnuPG. The idea is that instead of asking myself "what happens if I set a new, future expiration date on a revoked key?" with no clear answer, I could just think in terms of (e.g., I have no idea how it really works) "since the expiration date is…
That's like saying that if I understand the layout of the Ext4 filesystem, I can ask much more educated questions about how to write shell scripts or other kinds of programs to manipulate files in various ways.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a “ground-up” explanation of PGP/GnuPG?
#30I haven't read it, but "PGP: Source Code and Internals", by PGP's author Philip Zimmerman is worth a try. I've read his other book "Official PGP User's Guide" and learned quite a bit. https://www.amazon.com/PGP-Internals-Philip-R-Zimmermann/dp/...
Apparently you didn't learn the correct number of n's in Zimmermann ;) (prz is very particular about his n's)
Mea culpa. I could try to blame autocorrect, but the fault is entirely mine.