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pcp/man/pcp.pod
2013-10-28 22:50:05 +01:00

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=head1 DESCRIPTION
B<Pretty Curved Privacy> (pcp1) is a commandline utility which can
be used to encrypt files. B<pcp1> uses eliptc curve cryptography
for encryption (CURVE25519 by Dan J. Bernstein). While CURVE25519
is no worldwide accepted standard it hasn't been compromised by
the NSA - which might be better, depending on your point of view.
B<Caution>: since CURVE25519 is no accepted standard, B<pcp1> has
to be considered as experimental software. In fact, I wrote it just
to learn about the curve and see how it works.
Beside some differences it works like B<GNUPG>. So, if you already
know how to use gpg, you'll feel almost home.
=head1 QUICKSTART
Lets say, Alicia and Bobby want to exchange encrypted messages.
Here's what the've got to do.
First, both have create a secret key:
Alicia Bobby
pcp1 -k pcp1 -k
After entering their name, email address and a passphrase to protect
the key, it will be stored in their B<vault file> (by default ~/.pcpvault).
Now, both of them have to export the public key part of their key:
Alicia Bobby
pcp1 -p -O alicia.pub pcp1 -p -O bobby.pub
They've to exchange the public key somehow (which is not my
problem at the moment, use ssh, encrypted mail, whatever). Once exchanged,
they have to import it:
Alicia Bobby
pcp1 -P -I bobby.pub pcp1 -P -I alicia.pub
They will see a response as this when done:
key 0x29A323A2C295D391 added to .pcpvault.
Now, Alicia finally writes the secret message, encrypts it and
sends it to Bobby, who in turn decrypts it:
Alicia Bobby
echo "Love you, honey" > letter
pcp1 -e -i 0x29A323A2C295D391 -I letter -O letter.z85
cat letter.z85 | mail bobby@foo.bar
pcp1 -d -I letter.z85 | less
And that's it.
Please note the big difference to B<GPG> though: both Alicia
AND Bobby have to enter the passphrase for their secret key!
That's the way CURVE25519 works: you encrypt a message using
your secret key and the recipients public key and the recipient
does the opposite, he uses his secret key and your public key
to actually decrypt the message.
Oh - and if you're wondering why I named them Alicia and Bobby:
I was just sick of Alice and Bob. We're running NSA-free, so we're
using other sample names as well.