User:Brian McNeil/GPG

GNU Privacy Guard

Please note that old key (Fingerprint: 7C3D FFD5 5ED5 B80F 1D18 A52B E84C 8928 6ABC A7AD) is now revoked.

My current Wikinewsie.org key

Public Key ID: C03BC391 EFD52BB9 [Created: 2014-06-18, Expires: 2016-06-17]

Key fingerprint: 5166 F441 590B AEA6 58BF E51E C03B C391 EFD5 2BB9

Brian McNeil <brian.mcneilwikinewsie.org>

How-to securely create your own key

What you need to get started

GNU Privacy Guard is not-that difficult to use; however, the most-important aspect of using it to secure email communications is the actual key creation. This should be carried out offline; and, by booting from read-only media. Any CD-sized Linux distribution will do; personally, I recommend using one of Debian's CD installs. Once you've burned it, it's up to you to figure how how to persuade your PC to boot off the CD. This may be problematic if you have a PC running Windows 8 on fairly-current hardware! Newer PCs are deprecating BIOS in-favour of EFI and Secure Boot.

Should any Wikinews administrators, reviewers, or accredited reporters, encounter Secure Boot/EFI/UEFI difficulties, please leave a note on my talk page detailing your hardware (i.e. PC/laptop model, with link to manufacturer's specifications).

In addition to a CD, with which you will create your key, you will require media to save it to. If your computer has an SD slot, this may be used; otherwise, a USB stick of at least 4GiB is recommended (that, at some point, would be loaded with a Linux version where you can — securely — encrypt or decrypt messages).

Any additional steps to be detailed here following feedback.

Creating the key

In the below, usernameexample.com is where you would input the email address for which you are creating a key.

It is strongly recommended that, if you have not generated a gpg (or pgp) key in the past, that you create a few test keys with only a day or two's validity (ideally, against throwaway email accounts).

... TBD ...