FireGPG on Linux

How GPG works for the email.

Scenario 1: Sam creates public and private key Sam Publishes Sam's public Key to Key server. Bob Creates his public and private key Bob publishes Bob's public Key to Key Server.

Scenario 2:

No Sam and Bob need to engage a secured email communication. Sam pulls Bob's public key from key server and imports that public key into his trusted keyring using seahorse or gpg command line. Sam use Bob's Public Key to sign the message and send to Bob. Bob use his Private Key to decrypt and verify Sam's Message which was signed and encrypted using Bob's Public key.

Tools Needed

FireGPG GPG seahorse

Generate Key Pairs.

gpg --key-gen now the keys are generated and stored to keystore. Use the Seahorse to manual edit the keys and export keys. gpg normally get installed in usr/bin if you install with apt-get. Now install FireGPG plugin to FireFox.

Run the FireFox as ROOT. Here is the catch all the key genereration and keystore are acessible only for the root user. Firefox launch itself as firefox user, so when you launch the FireGPG it wont able to find the KEY's. It took me a while what was going wrong. If you launch the firefox as ROOT user or install the KEY's as universal user this issue can be fixed. Once you are in gmail and type the subject you should be able to see the encrypt and decrypt button and when you click the encrypt it should prompt for the public keys. If you are not a privilaged user to access the KEY store you wont see the KEYS.