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1 \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 0.1.0
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 @section A short Introduction
28
29 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
34 @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 It is a good idea to publish your fingerprint wherever possible.
77 For example via a business card or your website.
78
79 @section Installation of the Program
80
81 It is always recommend to use the latest version of the program. You
82 can download it from http://wald.intevation.org/projects/winpt.
83 Download the zip file with the binaries inside and unpack them in
84 a folder. All files need to be in the same folder, so if you change
85 the folder don't forget to move all files.
86 You should also download and verify the signature of the packet to
87 make sure that the release is really authentic.
88
89 To activate the program you just need to start WinPT.exe. You should
90 now see a little (golden key) icon in the taskbar which indicates that
91 the program is running. If you want to quit the program, right click
92 on the symbol and select "Exit".
93
94 Alternative, you may use one of the graphical GPG installers which
95 are available on the internet. I recommend to use Gpg4Win which
96 includes a set of very useful privacy tools, beside WinPT and it
97 is very easy to use with an average size (~4MB). For non-German
98 speaking users, I recommend the light version because it does not
99 contain the 2 German PDF manuals.
100
101 @subsection Getting the Source of the Program
102 As free software, according to the GNU General Public License,
103 WinPT also offers the source code for the program. It can be used
104 for reviews, to compile your own binary and/or to modify and/or
105 redistribute it or just to learn how it works. The source is available
106 at the same place you downloaded the binary. If not, you should
107 contact the author of the site.
108 The entire program can be build with free software; the default
109 environment is a cross-compiler hosted on a Linux box. All you
110 need is the mingw32 packages, a working autoconf environment
111 and the libs WinPT depends on (currently gpgme and libgpg-error).
112 It is also possible to build the binary with cygwin/mingw32 on
113 Windows but this environment is not actively supported and propably
114 needs adjustment of the source.
115
116 @subsection Configure the Program
117 After the installation not much of the default settings need to
118 be changed. If you prefer a special keyserver, it is propably a good
119 idea to open the keyserver dialog and to set one of the existing
120 keyservers as the default or create a new entry and mark it as the
121 new default. The default keyserver is subkeys.pgp.net, which is
122 the best choice for most users.
123
124 @subsection GPG Options
125 For expert users, the GPG preference dialog might contain some
126 interesting options. For example to set the expiration date of
127 a signature and/or to set the signing level for key signing.
128 It also allows to set a default 'encrypt-to' key and to set
129 the comment in ASCII armored files.
130
131 @subsection Preferences
132 In the WinPT preference dialog, the user can modify and/or disable
133 the default options. For new users it is suggested to leave the
134 default values as they are, except when there are problems related
135 to the hotkeys.
136
137 To enable keyring backups, the user can either decide to use the
138 GPG home directory as the backup folder or any other folder. In
139 the latter case, a folder needs to be chosen.
140
141
142 @section The First Start
143
144 This section is only important for people who never installed
145 and/or used WinPT before.
146
147 When the program is started the first time, it offers two choices.
148 The one is to generate a key pair and the other is to copy
149 existing GPG keyrings into the current installation.
150
151 We assume the user will select the first entry.
152
153 Now a new dialog is shown which requests some information from
154 the user to allow a meaningful association between the key and
155 the user. If the user prefer RSA keys, the check box should be marked.
156 If the entered data is OK, WinPT then generates a new key pair. As long
157 as this step takes, a progress dialog is shown to indicate the
158 enduring process. When the generation of the keypair is done, WinPT
159 offers the chance to backup the existing keyrings. This is definitely
160 an important decision because if the keyring will get corrupted
161 or lost, there is no way to recover the encrypted data. That is
162 why it is also important to store the backup, at least of the
163 secret keyring, at a @strong{safe} place.
164
165 @section Keyserver Access
166
167 An easy way to retrieve keys is the keyserver. You can think of
168 it like a huge database with a lot of keys as its content. It is
169 possible to search keys by a pattern, a keyid or even a fingerprint.
170 WinPT allows to access different kind of keyservers. For example
171 LDAP, HKP, Finger and HTTP. But the focus will be set on HKP because
172 this is the common case.
173
174 In some situations WinPT asks the user whether to retrieve keys
175 automatically. One example is the signature verification when the
176 key that issued the signature was not found in the keyring.
177
178 The main keyserver dialog allows to fetch one or more keys directly
179 or to search for a given pattern.
180
181 @subsection Retrieve a key by Key ID
182 The best way to fetch a key from the server is by the key ID.
183 Just enter the key ID, it is always a good idea to prefix it
184 with 0x and click the "Receive" button.
185
186 An example:
187
188 pattern: 0xBF3DF9B4
189
190 [Receive]
191
192
193 @subsection Retrieve a key by its email address
194 If you only know the email address from your partner, you can
195 enter it instead of the key ID. It is unlikely but possible
196 that there are more keys with the same address. In this situation,
197 WinPT will warn you that multiple keys were imported. The difference
198 to the search function is, that the keys were dirctly fetched and
199 not displayed as a key result list.
200
201
202 An example:
203
204 pattern: name_of_friend@@gmx.net
205
206 [Receive]
207
208
209 @subsection Search for a key by pattern
210 If you want to communicate with a new mail partner and you are
211 not sure about the key ID, it can be useful to search for his
212 email address. This address is considered as quite unique.
213
214 An example:
215
216 pattern: winpt@@windows-privacy-tray.com
217
218 [Search]
219
220 Now a dialog is opened with a list of all keys which matched
221 the search string. If the name @strong{and} the email address
222 is known, the matching key should be selected and "Receive"
223 should be clicked. Then the key will be downloaded and added
224 to your keyring. Now you can encrypt data with this key, for
225 example an email.
226
227 @subsection Sending a Key to the Keyserver
228 After you generated a new key pair, it is a good idea to send your
229 key to the keyserver to make it available for other users. If you
230 issue a signature, the key ID is part of the signature and people can
231 automatically retrieve your key when they try to verify the signature.
232
233 Actually, the action is performed in the Key Manager and not in the
234 keyserver dialog. Just open the Key Manager, select the key you want
235 to send right-click on it and chose "Send to Keyserver" in the popup
236 menu. Then a message box with the result is shown.
237
238 @subsection Add, Delete or Edit a Keyserver Entry
239 The keyserver dialog allow to change the existing keyserver entries,
240 to delete them or to add new entries. Just right click on a selected
241 item and a popup menu will be shown with ("Edit", "Remove" and "New").
242
243 @section Using the Clipboard
244
245 A major aim from the first day was, that the program does not
246 depend on a special mailer client. For this reason it uses the
247 clipboard to encrypt and/or sign data.
248 For the examples, let's assume that you want to write a new
249 mail or that you received a mail protected by GnuPG.
250
251 @subsection Encrypt Data in the Clipboard
252 Just copy the text from the mailer window into the clipboard.
253 This is usually done by CTRL+C, make sure you really selected
254 all portions of the text. Then right-click on the tray icon
255 and select Clipboard->Encryption. Now a dialog is shown to
256 select the recipients. This means you need to select all
257 keys which should be able to decrypt the mail. Confirm with "OK".
258 GnuPG now encrypts the data with the selected recipients. At the
259 end a message box with the result is shown. Now the clipboard should
260 contain the encrypted data. Just paste it into the mailer window.
261 The output should contain a header and a footer
262 "BEGIN PGP MESSAGE" and "END PGP MESSAGE.
263
264 @subsection Decrypt/Verify Data from the Clipboard
265
266 @subsection Sign the Clipboard
267
268 @section The Key Manager
269
270 This part of the program is propably most important for many users.
271 It contains function to manage your keyring and to perform actions
272 which are required and/or useful in the OpenPGP environment.
273
274 @subsection Tips
275
276 @itemize @bullet
277
278 @item
279 If you want to import quickly a key from a into the keyring, just
280 drag and drop the file into the Key Manager window. Then the import
281 procedure will be automatically started.
282
283 @item
284 Key which were fetched from keyservers often contain a lot of,
285 maybe obsolete, self signatures, if you want to get rid of them
286 you can use the Key Edit->Clean feature. Just start the edit
287 dialog and select the clean command. That's it.
288
289 @item
290 The keyserver dialog does not allow to import a key directly
291 via an URL, as an alternative you may use the "Import HTTP..."
292 feature in the Key Manager. With it you can directly fetch keys
293 from the web (Example: http://www.users.my-isp.de/~joe/gpg-keys.asc).
294
295 @item
296 To customize the parameters of the generated key, you can use
297 the expert key generation. It allows you to set the public key
298 algorithm and/or the size of the key directly.
299
300 @item
301 Most of the list view based dialogs allow to use the right
302 mouse button, to show popup menus with available commands.
303
304 @end itemize
305
306 @subsection Create a Revocation Certificate
307
308 It is very important to do this step early as possible. With this
309 certificate, you can revoke your entire key. The reason for this
310 can be for example, that your key is no longer used or even compromised.
311 After you generated the revoc cert, you should move it to a secure place
312 because anybody who gets access to it, can render your key unuseable.
313
314 Just right-click on your key and select "Revoke Cert". If you do this
315 step directly after key generation, there is no need to change the
316 default values. Just select a file name and enter the passphrase.
317 The program issues a warning which should be read carefully.
318
319 @subsection Adding a new Secondary Key
320
321 For most users the existing keys in the key pair are enough
322 and no extra key is needed. But there are some exceptions.
323
324 @itemize @bullet
325
326 @item
327 The primary key has no secondary key and the primary key is not
328 able to encrypt data. In this case it can be a good idea to
329 add a secondary encryption key.
330
331 @item
332 A lot of people use secondary encryption keys with an expiration
333 date. Usually the key is valid for 1-2 years. After the key is expired,
334 a new key is needed in order to encrypt data.
335
336 @end itemize
337
338 What kind of public key algorithm should be selected is a matter
339 of taste. RSA and ElGamal are both capable for encryption. For most
340 users it's a good idea to let the program chose the key size (in bits).
341 The default settings should be secure enough for most purposes.
342
343 @subsection Adding a new User ID
344 If you got a new email account, it's propably a good idea to
345 add these new account to your key also. For example:
346
347 A new account was registed at gmail.com (john.doo@@gmail.com).
348 Then you should create a new user ID with the following fields:
349
350 name: John Doo
351
352 email: john.doo@@gmail.com
353
354 comment: (optional)
355
356 Now email programs are able to associate this address with your
357 key when somebody wants to send you a protected mail to this account.
358
359 @subsection Adding a new Photographic ID
360 With this function you can add a photo to your public. It will be
361 displayed in the key property dialog.
362
363 You just need to select a JPEG file which contains the photo and
364 enter your passphrase and confirm with OK. Please read the note
365 in the dialog carefully to make sure the photo has a proper size
366 (file, height and weight).
367
368 @subsection Adding a new Designated Revoker
369 If you want to allow another key to revoke your own key, this
370 might be useful if you lost your secret or a simliar situation,
371 you can use this function to add a designated revoker to your key.
372
373 All you need to do is to select the key you want to add as a desig
374 revoker. But please bear in mind that this procedure cannot be undone
375 and that this person really has the power to make your public key
376 unuseable. You really should trust the selected key, in case it is
377 not a key owned by yourself.
378
379 @subsection Export a Public Key
380 There are several reason why to export a public key and there
381 are also several ways to do it. If you want to send the key
382 directly to a mail recipient, you can select the key, right-click,
383 and select "Send Key to Mail Recipient". As an alternative, you
384 can also export it to the clipboard or to a file. To export a
385 key to the clipboard, you can select "Copy key to Clipboard"
386 in the popup menu of the selected key. To export it to a file,
387 you need to select the menu "Key" and then "Export...". The
388 program will automatically suggest a name for the output.
389
390 @subsection Import a Public Key
391 Similar to the key import, the import of a key can be done in
392 several ways. First, let's assume you got a mail with an OpenPGP
393 key included as inline text. Then you can use the current window
394 feature and "Decrypt/Verify" to import the key. Alternative you
395 also may use the clipboard. To achieve this, you first need to
396 select the entire key (CTRL+A) and then copy it to the clipboard
397 (CTRL+C), then use the Key Manager (Edit->Paste) to import it.
398 If the key is stored as an attachment, or you want to import
399 a key from a file in general, just drag the file and drop it
400 into the Key Manager window or use "Key" -> "Import...".
401
402 @subsection Sign a Public Key
403 If you verified that a key really belongs to its owner, you
404 should sign the key to integrate it into your Web of Trust
405 and also to mark the key as valid in your keyring. Do not sign
406 a key you just got via email with the request to sign it. Anybody
407 can create a key with your (or better ANY) name, these information
408 are no hint to whom the key really belongs. You can check a key
409 by meeting or calling the key owner and verify the key fingerprint
410 of the key with the one published by the key owner. Additional checks
411 should be to watch at his driver license or the identity card to make
412 sure that name of the key matches the name of the key owner. After
413 this procedure is done, you can open the Key Manager, select the
414 right key and either use the context menu "Sign Key" or use the
415 toolbar button.
416
417 The next dialog will summarize the key information and some
418 additional options. For example if the signature should be
419 local or exportable. Local means the signature will be stripped
420 if you export the key and no one else except you can use it to
421 calculate the validity. If you mark the signature exportable,
422 any other user can see and use it. Now you can select the key
423 you want to use to sign and enter the passphrase. Confirm with "OK"
424 and the key will be signed. Now the validity of the new key is
425 "Full". It is propably a good idea to set the ownertrust of the
426 key. For a detailled description, see the chapter "Key Ownertrust".
427
428 @subsection Key Ownertrust
429 First we should explain what the ownertrust of a key is. The ownertrust
430 is a measurement how much you trust somebody to certify and check keys
431 of other people. For example, if you know that Bob is really the owner
432 of the key, you should sign it. But he is also known to sign other keys
433 without checking the idenity of the other key owner. Values for the
434 ownertrust are 1) Don't Know 2) Don't Trust 3) Marginal 4) Full
435 and thus you should propably use an ownertrust value like "Marginal".
436 But this is a personal decision and stored in a separate file and
437 never exported with the public keys. For further information, please
438 take a look into the GNU Privacy Handbook.
439 Just a last work on Key Pairs, they are automatically marked as
440 "Ultimate" because the key belongs to you and you trust it implicit.
441
442 @bye

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