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1 twoaday 222 \input texinfo
2    
3     @setfilename WinPT
4    
5     This file describes the Windows Privacy Tray program and its main functions
6    
7     This file is free under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.
8    
9     Copyright (C) 2006 Timo Schulz
10    
11     Version 0.0.0
12    
13     @settitle WinPT - The Windows Privacy Tray; a free GPG front-end for Windows
14    
15     @section Requirements for WinPT
16    
17     First you need to have a working GnuPG 1.4 installtion on the machine you
18     plan to install WinPT. If you don't have GPG in your machine, please
19     visit http://www.gnupg.org and download the latest GPG version there.
20     It comes with a graphical installer so there is no need to do this
21     step manually.
22    
23     You need at least Windows 98/2K/XP, but Windows XP or better is
24     recommend. The program also works on NT/95/ME but there is no support
25     for these OS versions any longer.
26    
27 twoaday 224 @section A short Introduction
28 twoaday 225
29 twoaday 224 WinPT is a graphical GnuPG front-end which resides in the task bar.
30     It is divided into several, so-called, managers. There is a manager
31     for the keyring, for files and for smart cards. The aim of the program
32     is to secure email communication and to perform file encryption.
33 twoaday 222
34 twoaday 224 @subsection What is GnuPG
35     GnuPG is a tool for secure communication and data storage.
36     It can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures.
37     It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant
38     with the proposed Internet standard as described in RFC2440.
39    
40     @subsection The Web of Trust
41     For a detailled description of these and other GnuPG topics, I
42     recommend the available literature at http://www.gnupg.org. But
43     at least a general overview should be given here.
44    
45     The certification scheme of OpenPGP does not base on a hirachical
46     approach. Instead it uses a combination of ownertrust and direct
47     key certification. Here is an example with Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave.
48    
49     Alice knows Bob and checked the fingerprint of Bob's key when he
50     met him personally. Thus she knows that the key really belongs to
51     its owner and he trusts Bob to certify other keys. Then she issued
52     a signature on Bob's key. Bob knows Carol and also checked her identity.
53     Then he signed her key. Alice does not know Carol, but he knows Bob
54     and Bob trusts Carol. And because Alice trusts Bob, at a level she
55     decided before, he also trusts Carol. It's a transitiv relation.
56     Dave is isolated and does not know anybody from the mentioned persons,
57     thus he is not in the WoT.
58     Another very important point is, that the signer can decide,
59     after the certification, how much he trusts the key owner to
60     certify other keys.
61    
62     It is very important to check the identify of a key owner. Mostly
63     this is done by comparing the fingerprint, which were submitted
64     by phone or written down at a personal meeting, with the fingerprint
65     of the key in the keyring. Please bear in mind that anybody can create
66     a key with an email address and a specific name. Thus it is not
67     recommend to sign keys without doing this check before!
68    
69     The fingerprint of the key is hexadecial (160-bit) sequence divided
70     into 10 groups of 4 hex digits. You can get the fingerprint of a key
71     by opening the key property dialog. There you can mark the fingerprint
72     and copy it to the clipboard.
73    
74     Example: 1D75 8108 5BC9 D9FB E78B 2078 ED46 81C9 BF3D F9B4
75    
76 twoaday 222 @section Installation of the Program
77    
78     It is always recommend to use the latest version of the program. You
79     can download it from http://wald.intevation.org/projects/winpt.
80     Download the zip file with the binaries inside and unpack them in
81     a folder. All files need to be in the same folder, so if you change
82     the folder don't forget to move all files.
83 twoaday 224 You should also download and verify the signature of the packet to
84     make sure that the release is really authentic.
85 twoaday 222
86     To activate the program you just need to start WinPT.exe. You should
87     now see a little (golden key) icon in the taskbar which indicates that
88     the program is running. If you want to quit the program, right click
89     on the symbol and select "Exit".
90    
91     Alternative, you may use one of the graphical GPG installers which
92     are available on the internet. I recommend to use Gpg4Win which
93     includes a set of very useful privacy tools, beside WinPT and it
94     is very easy to use with an average size (~4MB). For non-German
95     speaking users, I recommend the light version because it does not
96     contain the 2 German PDF manuals.
97    
98 twoaday 225 @subsection Getting the Source of the Program
99     As free software, according to the GNU General Public License,
100     WinPT also offers the source code for the program. It can be used
101     for reviews, to compile your own binary and/or to modify and/or
102     redistribute it or just to learn how it works. The source is available
103     at the same place you downloaded the binary. If not, you should
104     contact the author of the site.
105     The entire program can be build with free software; the default
106     environment is a cross-compiler hosted on a Linux box. All you
107     need is the mingw32 packages, a working autoconf environment
108     and the libs WinPT depends on (currently gpgme and libgpg-error).
109     It is also possible to build the binary with cygwin/mingw32 on
110     Windows but this environment is not actively supported and propably
111     needs adjustment of the source.
112    
113 twoaday 222 @subsection Configure the Program
114     After the installation not much of the default settings need to
115     be changed. If you prefer a special keyserver, it is propably a good
116     idea to open the keyserver dialog and to set one of the existing
117     keyservers as the default or create a new entry and mark it as the
118     new default. The default keyserver is subkeys.pgp.net, which is
119     the best choice for most users.
120    
121     @subsection GPG Options
122     For expert users, the GPG preference dialog might contain some
123     interesting options. For example to set the expiration date of
124     a signature and/or to set the signing level for key signing.
125     It also allows to set a default 'encrypt-to' key and to set
126     the comment in ASCII armored files.
127    
128     @subsection Preferences
129     In the WinPT preference dialog, the user can modify and/or disable
130     the default options. For new users it is suggested to leave the
131     default values as they are, except when there are problems related
132     to the hotkeys.
133    
134     To enable keyring backups, the user can either decide to use the
135     GPG home directory as the backup folder or any other folder. In
136 twoaday 224 the latter case, a folder needs to be chosen.
137 twoaday 222
138    
139     @section The First Start
140 twoaday 225
141 twoaday 222 This section is only important for people who never installed
142     and/or used WinPT before.
143    
144     When the program is started the first time, it offers two choices.
145     The one is to generate a key pair and the other is to copy
146     existing GPG keyrings into the current installation.
147    
148     We assume the user will select the first entry.
149    
150     Now a new dialog is shown which requests some information from
151     the user to allow a meaningful association between the key and
152     the user. If the user prefer RSA keys, the check box should be marked.
153     If the entered data is OK, WinPT then generates a new key pair. As long
154     as this step takes, a progress dialog is shown to indicate the
155     enduring process. When the generation of the keypair is done, WinPT
156     offers the chance to backup the existing keyrings. This is definitely
157     an important decision because if the keyring will get corrupted
158     or lost, there is no way to recover the encrypted data. That is
159     why it is also important to store the backup, at least of the
160     secret keyring, at a @strong{safe} place.
161    
162     @section Keyserver Access
163 twoaday 225
164 twoaday 222 An easy way to retrieve keys is the keyserver. You can think of
165     it like a huge database with a lot of keys as its content. It is
166     possible to search keys by a pattern, a keyid or even a fingerprint.
167     WinPT allows to access different kind of keyservers. For example
168     LDAP, HKP, Finger and HTTP. But the focus will be set on HKP because
169     this is the common case.
170    
171     In some situations WinPT asks the user whether to retrieve keys
172     automatically. One example is the signature verification when the
173     key that issued the signature was not found in the keyring.
174    
175     The main keyserver dialog allows to fetch one or more keys directly
176     or to search for a given pattern.
177    
178     @subsection Retrieve a key by Key ID
179 twoaday 224 The best way to fetch a key from the server is by the key ID.
180     Just enter the key ID, it is always a good idea to prefix it
181     with 0x and click the "Receive" button.
182 twoaday 222
183 twoaday 224 An example:
184    
185     pattern: 0xBF3DF9B4
186    
187     [Receive]
188    
189    
190 twoaday 222 @subsection Retrieve a key by its email address
191 twoaday 224 If you only know the email address from your partner, you can
192     enter it instead of the key ID. It is unlikely but possible
193     that there are more keys with the same address. In this situation,
194     WinPT will warn you that multiple keys were imported. The difference
195     to the search function is, that the keys were dirctly fetched and
196     not displayed as a key result list.
197 twoaday 222
198 twoaday 224
199     An example:
200    
201     pattern: name_of_friend@@gmx.net
202    
203     [Receive]
204    
205    
206 twoaday 222 @subsection Search for a key by pattern
207     If you want to communicate with a new mail partner and you are
208     not sure about the key ID, it can be useful to search for his
209     email address. This address is considered as quite unique.
210    
211     An example:
212    
213 twoaday 224 pattern: winpt@@windows-privacy-tray.com
214 twoaday 222
215     [Search]
216    
217     Now a dialog is opened with a list of all keys which matched
218     the search string. If the name @strong{and} the email address
219     is known, the matching key should be selected and "Receive"
220     should be clicked. Then the key will be downloaded and added
221     to your keyring. Now you can encrypt data with this key, for
222     example an email.
223    
224 twoaday 224 @subsection Sending a Key to the Keyserver
225     After you generated a new key pair, it is a good idea to send your
226     key to the keyserver to make it available for other users. If you
227     issue a signature, the key ID is part of the signature and people can
228     automatically retrieve your key when they try to verify the signature.
229 twoaday 222
230 twoaday 224 Actually, the action is performed in the Key Manager and not in the
231     keyserver dialog. Just open the Key Manager, select the key you want
232     to send right-click on it and chose "Send to Keyserver" in the popup
233     menu. Then a message box with the result is shown.
234    
235     @subsection Add, Delete or Edit a Keyserver Entry
236     The keyserver dialog allow to change the existing keyserver entries,
237     to delete them or to add new entries. Just right click on a selected
238     item and a popup menu will be shown with ("Edit", "Remove" and "New").
239    
240     @section Using the Clipboard
241 twoaday 225
242 twoaday 224 A major aim from the first day was, that the program does not
243     depend on a special mailer client. For this reason it uses the
244     clipboard to encrypt and/or sign data.
245     For the examples, let's assume that you want to write a new
246     mail or that you received a mail protected by GnuPG.
247    
248     @subsection Encrypt Data in the Clipboard
249     Just copy the text from the mailer window into the clipboard.
250     This is usually done by CTRL+C, make sure you really selected
251     all portions of the text. Then right-click on the tray icon
252     and select Clipboard->Encryption. Now a dialog is shown to
253     select the recipients. This means you need to select all
254     keys which should be able to decrypt the mail. Confirm with "OK".
255     GnuPG now encrypts the data with the selected recipients. At the
256     end a message box with the result is shown. Now the clipboard should
257     contain the encrypted data. Just paste it into the mailer window.
258     The output should contain a header and a footer
259     "BEGIN PGP MESSAGE" and "END PGP MESSAGE.
260    
261     @subsection Decrypt/Verify Data from the Clipboard
262    
263     @subsection Sign the Clipboard
264    
265     @section The Key Manager
266 twoaday 225
267 twoaday 224 This part of the program is propably most important for many users.
268     It contains function to manage your keyring and to perform actions
269     which are required and/or useful in the OpenPGP environment.
270    
271     @subsection Tips
272    
273     @itemize @bullet
274    
275     @item
276     If you want to import quickly a key from a into the keyring, just
277     drag and drop the file into the Key Manager window. Then the import
278     procedure will be automatically started.
279    
280     @item
281     Key which were fetched from keyservers often contain a lot of,
282     maybe obsolete, self signatures, if you want to get rid of them
283     you can use the Key Edit->Clean feature. Just start the edit
284     dialog and select the clean command. That's it.
285    
286     @item
287     The keyserver dialog does not allow to import a key directly
288     via an URL, as an alternative you may use the "Import HTTP..."
289     feature in the Key Manager. With it you can directly fetch keys
290     from the web (Example: http://www.users.my-isp.de/~joe/gpg-keys.asc).
291    
292     @item
293     To customize the parameters of the generated key, you can use
294     the expert key generation. It allows you to set the public key
295     algorithm and/or the size of the key directly.
296    
297 twoaday 225 @item
298     Most of the list view based dialogs allow to use the right
299     mouse button, to show popup menus with available commands.
300    
301 twoaday 224 @end itemize
302    
303 twoaday 225 @subsection Create a Revocation Certificate
304    
305     It is very important to do this step early as possible. With this
306     certificate, you can revoke your entire key. The reason for this
307     can be for example, that your key is no longer used or even compromised.
308     After you generated the revoc cert, you should move it to a secure place
309     because anybody who gets access to it, can render your key unuseable.
310    
311     Just right-click on your key and select "Revoke Cert". If you do this
312     step directly after key generation, there is no need to change the
313     default values. Just select a file name and enter the passphrase.
314     The program issues a warning which should be read carefully.
315    
316 twoaday 222 @subsection Adding a new secondary key
317    
318     For most users the existing keys in the key pair are enough
319     and no extra key is needed. But there are some exceptions.
320    
321     @itemize @bullet
322    
323     @item
324     The primary key has no secondary key and the primary key is not
325     able to encrypt data. In this case it can be a good idea to
326     add a secondary encryption key.
327    
328     @item
329     A lot of people use secondary encryption keys with an expiration
330     date. Usually the key is valid for 1-2 years. After the key is expired,
331     a new key is needed in order to encrypt data.
332    
333     @end itemize
334    
335     What kind of public key algorithm should be selected is a matter
336     of taste. RSA and ElGamal are both capable for encryption. For most
337     users it's a good idea to let the program chose the key size (in bits).
338     The default settings should be secure enough for most purposes.
339    
340     @subsection Adding a new user ID
341     If you got a new email account, it's propably a good idea to
342     add these new account to your key also. For example:
343    
344     A new account was registed at gmail.com (john.doo@@gmail.com).
345     Then you should create a new user ID with the following fields:
346    
347     name: John Doo
348    
349     email: john.doo@@gmail.com
350    
351     comment: (optional)
352    
353     Now email programs are able to associate this address with your
354     key when somebody wants to send you a protected mail to this account.
355    
356     @subsection Adding a photographic ID
357     With this function you can add a photo to your public. It will be
358     displayed in the key property dialog.
359    
360     You just need to select a JPEG file which contains the photo and
361     enter your passphrase and confirm with OK. Please read the note
362     in the dialog carefully to make sure the photo has a proper size
363     (file, height and weight).
364    
365     @subsection Adding a new designated revoker
366     If you want to allow another key to revoke your own key, this
367     might be useful if you lost your secret or a simliar situation,
368     you can use this function to add a designated revoker to your key.
369    
370     All you need to do is to select the key you want to add as a desig
371     revoker. But please bear in mind that this procedure cannot be undone
372     and that this person really has the power to make your public key
373     unuseable. You really should trust the selected key, in case it is
374     not a key owned by yourself.
375    
376 twoaday 226 @subsection Export a Public Key
377     There are several reason why to export a public key and there
378     are also several ways to do it. If you want to send the key
379     directly to a mail recipient, you can select the key, right-click,
380     and select "Send Key to Mail Recipient". As an alternative, you
381     can also export it to the clipboard or to a file. To export a
382     key to the clipboard, you can select "Copy key to Clipboard"
383     in the popup menu of the selected key. To export it to a file,
384     you need to select the menu "Key" and then "Export...". The
385     program will automatically suggest a name for the output.
386    
387     @subsection Import a Public Key
388     Similar to the key import, the import of a key can be done in
389     several ways. First, let's assume you got a mail with an OpenPGP
390     key included as inline text. Then you can use the current window
391     feature and "Decrypt/Verify" to import the key. Alternative you
392     also may use the clipboard. To achieve this, you first need to
393     select the entire key (CTRL+A) and then copy it to the clipboard
394     (CTRL+C), then use the Key Manager (Edit->Paste) to import it.
395     If the key is stored as an attachment, or you want to import
396     a key from a file in general, just drag the file and drop it
397     into the Key Manager window or use "Key" -> "Import...".
398    
399 twoaday 222 @bye

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