

#Gnupg mac terminal install
Linuxįor Linux, you don’t need to install anything.
#Gnupg mac terminal how to
So all you’ll be doing is proving you are getting genuine malicious software! To protect from this attack, you should confirm that you are definitely at the right web address, AND use GPG – I’ll explain later.įirst, it’s good to know how to check the hash output using SHA 256. That’s because an attacker will provide you with fake software, and a hash of the fake software. While this reduces the chance of you downloading malicious software, it doesn’t help if you are downloading from an attacker’s website. If the output is identical, we can be sure that the file we downloaded is identical to the website provider’s version of the software (down to the last bit of data). When we download software, one way to check that the program we downloaded has not been tampered with is to hash the file (commonly with SHA 256), and compare the digital fingerprint output with the published output from the website we are downloading from.

SHA 256 is used in Bitcoin mining proof-of-work, but that is a different use for what I’m discussing here. GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a free-software replacement for Symantec’s PGP cryptographic software suite.PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. Phil Zimmermann developed PGP in 1991. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication.Unix is commercial software GNU is open source. GNU stands for “GNU not Unix”, a recursive acronym. GNU is an extensive collection of free software, including an operating system (eg Linux) and individual programs.It is a cryptographic hash function (Wikipedia), and it is worth at least reading the introductory text to this Wikipedia article if you have no idea what that means. SHA 256 stands for Secure Hash Algorithm.Doing, not just reading, helps you absorb the information. This can be learned here for Linux and Mac (they both use Unix), and here for Windows.Īs you learn, you should actually perform the commands. Having very basic command line skills is a prerequisite. If you pay attention, read carefully, and learn in small steps, then it’s not that difficult.

GPG is a gift, just like Bitcoin – it’s worth your time to learn a little. So, understanding some basics of GPG is crucial. Bitcoiners don’t trust, they verify, and they do their best to remain private.
