Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: xThunder on November 21, 2012, 04:25 am

Title: SR noob needs just a bit more help with PGP please
Post by: xThunder on November 21, 2012, 04:25 am
hey guys, im new to SR, and am trying to make my first purchase. at first, when i heard about this masterpiece, i thought all i needed was a link...then i dug deeper and learned of tor, the bitcoins, the whole 9 nine yards. i taught myself to set up tor and find the site etc(not that hard i know but it was a little difficult to figure out from scratch) then i learned the process of bitcoins which i finally dealt with today. then i had to transfer the coins, wait, transfer again, wait, and finally i did it, i had currency on SR.

then i learned about PGP lol. ok so, i installed everything, i have my vendors key, i generated my own key, and even more...i understand the whole process!! the problem ive encountered is rather embarrassing, as the only thing i dont know how to do is import my vendor's key. i understand that i type, copy the text, then encrypt the text with both our keys, then copy and paste it where it has to go. to encrypt it with his key, i have to save his public key, correct? ok, so i click on import keys...and heres my problem. where the hell do i save it so i can import it? is there another way to do it besides saving his key to my computer? do i have any of the process wrong?

Thank you guys for any help! Glad to be on SR!
Title: Re: SR noob needs just a bit more help with PGP please
Post by: Nakorx on November 21, 2012, 09:08 pm
You seem to have the wrong idea about how you use the vendor's public key to encrypt your address or whatever.
You only use his (or her) key, not yours!
But to import a vendors key, you first copy it. Then you have to save it to a file or maybe you can use the clipboard. (I am assuming you have a GUI version of PGP) Then you click on import key, and tell the program where to import the key from, i.e. a file or the clipboard. (Usually it is a file, not all will allow use of the clipboard for importing a key). And that is it, you do not have to worry about saving the key, it will be done for you. If you are successful the program should spit out something like: "Imported Public key from  blah blah" whereas if you had imported a key pair(public and private) it would have said "Imported Public and Private Key from blah blah."
Or something very similar. And then you should be able to see it on your "keyring".
When you want to encrypt your name and addy, just write it on the clipboard. Then click on encrypt and choose the the public key of your vendor from your keyring, which will automatically be presented to you.
Confirm that you do want to use that key, click on OK and the message will be generated on the clipboard.
Now all you have to do is copy and paste it into the address area on the SR purchase form. Simple :)
Title: Re: SR noob needs just a bit more help with PGP please
Post by: frank-butcher24 on November 21, 2012, 09:34 pm
Most graphical (GUI) versions of PGP  (as opposed to command-line versions) allow you to right-click > paste a public key in.

So the process would be copy the vendor's key from his page on SR.

Go to your PGP program, locate the list of keys, right-click > paste.

Job done. Then to encrypt a message, as Nakorx says you don't need to use your own key, only the key of the vendor. (You could use your own key too if you wanted to - it'd allow both you and the vendor to unencrypt the message. But why would you need to unencrypt it when you already know what's in it...)
Title: Re: SR noob needs just a bit more help with PGP please
Post by: dder1 on November 29, 2012, 10:58 pm
I am hoping someone can help me, my problem is I cannot import the message to be encrypted through the clipboard. I saved it in notepad and imported that. This seemed to work fine, when encrypting the message it didn't save to the clipboard instead saved on my pc as a .gpg file. How can I access the text to copy into SR from this .gpg file? Or am I doing something wrong that means it didn't copy to the clipboard? I am using kleopatra.
Thank you in advance for any help!
Title: Re: SR noob needs just a bit more help with PGP please
Post by: Party Girl on November 29, 2012, 11:13 pm
Kleo is known to be problematic.  I switched over to http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/contact.php and have never looked back.  It is so easy and you can install in on an encrypted  USB drive partition with everything else you use.
Title: Re: SR noob needs just a bit more help with PGP please
Post by: WinterMoon on November 30, 2012, 05:32 pm


Take Party Girl's advice -- use GPG4USB.  Kleopatra should be shot and buried in a hole.

Guru
[/quote]

Agree tht Kleopatra needs to be buried!  You can be up and running with GPG4USB in 10 minutes, no exaggeration ...