GPG

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Christian Christmann

The short answer is that the 0x9... is the key to his key.

The longer answer is that each GPG and PGP key is a long binary number (IIRC, it can reach 4096 bits long - that is 512 bytes). PGP and GPG organize their 'key rings' (places to keep keys) such that a short-ish number can be used as a locator for the real key. This number also provides a consistancy check to determine whether the real key is malformed or not, and the algorithm for obtaining the short-ish number from the key is well-known and implemented by both GPG and PGP.

Your correspondant has given you that short-ish number that can be used to pick his public key out of your key-ring. But you first need his public keyinyour key-ring to pick it out. If you have it, you can use the short-ish number to locate the real key, and encrypt a message with that real key. If not, you'll have to either ask your correspondant for his public key, or see if you can obtain his public key from a public key server. Either way, you can check that you got the right key by checking the short-ish number provided by your correspondant against the short-ish number computed from the obtained key.

HTH - --

Lew Pitcher, IT Specialist, Enterprise Data Systems Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFDFaKEagVFX4UWr64RAnhsAKDMuwBeMVkes9oaXyUlTLXrjR428ACgxiUm NqCblz9+kDqdhS-AFDphxxI= =PwNh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----