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No. You need his public key. His private key should be known only by him. That said, he also needed the recipients public key to encrypt it. Private keys ar

No. You need his public key. His private key should be known only by him. That said, he also needed the recipients public key to encrypt it. Private keys are private. Public keys are public. Edit: I realise this is unclear. He needs his private key and the public key of the recipient to encrypt the message. Then only the recipient can decrypt the message. To do this, the recipient needs his private key and the encryptor's public key. Hope that helps.

jnbiche 13y ago
>Edit: I realise this is unclear. He needs his private key and the public key of the recipient to encrypt the message. Then only the recipient can decrypt the message. To do this, the recipient needs his private key and the encryptor's public key. Hope that helps. Incorrect. To encrypt a message, you only need the intended recipient's public key. You don't need your own private key. Likewise, for the recipient to decrypt, they only need their private key. No need for the encryptor's public key. You can send messages to other PGP users without ever creating your own keypair. It's only to receive encrypted messages that you need a keypair. Now, if you want to sign a message that you're sending, you need a keypair.
- coherentpony 13y ago
  > Incorrect. To encrypt a message, you only need the intended recipient's public key. You don't need your own private key. I don't think this is right. The diagram here appears to depict otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Public_key_shared_secret.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Public_key_shared_secret....
  - jnbiche 13y ago
    No. This diagram is depicting the creation of a shared secret for symmetric communication. PGP is asymmetric. I tell you what. Do you have a PGP keypair? Post your public key here (the one you would host on a public keyserver) and I'll show you a short script that can encrypt information that only you can read using your private key. It will use no other keypair besides your own public key.
bushido 13y ago
You seem to be using encrypt/decrypt interchangeably. You had said: > You need his public key to "decrypt" it. My correction assumed that you had made a typo when you said "decrypt". Also you only need the recipients public key to encrypt the message. [0] [0] http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/ http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/

jnbiche 13y ago

>Edit: I realise this is unclear. He needs his private key and the public key of the recipient to encrypt the message. Then only the recipient can decrypt the message. To do this, the recipient needs his private key and the encryptor's public key. Hope that helps. Incorrect. To encrypt a message, you only need the intended recipient's public key. You don't need your own private key. Likewise, for the recipient to decrypt, they only need their private key. No need for the encryptor's public key. You can send messages to other PGP users without ever creating your own keypair. It's only to receive encrypted messages that you need a keypair. Now, if you want to sign a message that you're sending, you need a keypair.

coherentpony 13y ago
> Incorrect. To encrypt a message, you only need the intended recipient's public key. You don't need your own private key. I don't think this is right. The diagram here appears to depict otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Public_key_shared_secret.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Public_key_shared_secret....
- jnbiche 13y ago
  No. This diagram is depicting the creation of a shared secret for symmetric communication. PGP is asymmetric. I tell you what. Do you have a PGP keypair? Post your public key here (the one you would host on a public keyserver) and I'll show you a short script that can encrypt information that only you can read using your private key. It will use no other keypair besides your own public key.

bushido 13y ago

You seem to be using encrypt/decrypt interchangeably. You had said: > You need his public key to "decrypt" it. My correction assumed that you had made a typo when you said "decrypt". Also you only need the recipients public key to encrypt the message. [0] [0] http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/ http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/