Some of my friends came over my computer and started asking me what's the small locking icon found on the system tray on my desktop. I had a tough time explaining to them so I'll put my knowledge into writing. PGP is a software designed based on the public/client key.

Let me start from the beginning of cryptology so that my dear readers can grasp some basic concept. Okay then, so here goes. Suffice to say that in order to send a message across the net unencrypted it would look like:

This is a message
However, if I decided to decode it, it might look like this:

Guvf vf n zrffntr
This is known as ROT13 encryption, one of the most basic encryption widely used as jokes & pranks. What it does is that it will take each of one character and replace them with 13 letters away. The good thing is that it is self inverse as there are only 26 characters in English letters.

There are other more substantial codex in existence but I'll concentrate on the basic ones. Based on ROT13, 13 is the key to encrypt and decrypt a message. By building on complex mathematical equation, PGP was designed with a simple method of doing message encryption.


PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy, which isn't a very hyped name, if you ask me but rather the process behind it is simple to comprehend once you have overlook it's basic complexity. When one running a PGP software for the first time, it will take into consideration of:

1. Current time
2. Current date
3. Computer processor
4. Computer name
5. Various other random elements like the number in registry and such

By taking the above number, PGP is able to make sure to generate a key that no other computer would have even within the same time to the milisecond. That will ensure that there will never be a duplicate of the key. PGP will then run through a complex mathematical process to produce:

1. Public Key
2. Private Key

Public & Private keys are much like the 13 number key as discussed as above but they go one step further. You can give anyone a Public Key. Anyone can use the key to decode the mail to be sent to you. During transaction, there is no one except the person with the Private Key can decode the message. It'll look something like this:

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 6.5.8ckt http://www.ipgpp.com/
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=1/aE
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

Basically it contains the same message as above but with complex encryption, no one can read the text above and only the person with the correct Private Key can decrypt it to read the message. For additional info on other methods of cryptology, you can view my next blog.