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Viktor Ageyev edited this page Mar 15, 2019 · 2 revisions

Public OpenPGP Key

The user's key is just a set of characters that can be stored in the database or even printed and stored by records management service.

PGP key looks like this (it is an RSA 2048-bit key used by default in GnuPG) :

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux)
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=Yk27
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Such a text can be contained in a public key file with extension .asc, for example:

testuser.public.key.asc

To be easy readable by human, information about the key can be reduced to the key ID and the key fingerprint, which look like this:

Key-ID: 0B4F9A19
Fingerprint: 6E010125DD2E874B8FF6A4BD2B3E29DE0B4F9A19

Key fingerprint is different for each key. To verify the signature is sufficient to ensure that the key with specific fingerprint belongs to a particular person.

Cryptonomica offers for the market the first legally relevant system of public key's certification, that can be run around the world.


See also:

'Anatomy of a GPG Key' by David Steele