E-Mail Security

Who's reading your e-mail? The Competition? A Reporter? Your Boss?

The world of e-mail is the world of postcards. Between you and your correspondents may lurk a foreign government, a business competitor, an overzealous law enforcement agency, or even just a nosy neighbor! The problem is, all of these potential eavesdroppers, given firly simple access tools, can read your messages as easily as a postal worker can read your postcards. In this book, security expert Bruce Schneier shows you how to protect your privacy by sealing your messages in "electronic envelopes".

E-Mail Security is about protecting electronic mail from spies, interlopers, and spoofs — people who may want to destroy, alter, or just look at your private communications. The book shows how you can protect the financial information, contract negotiations, or personal correspondence you entrust to public or private networks — and it shows how this protection is available right now, with free or inexpensive software. The author, a highly regarded security consultant, explains the issues and technologies, examines the currently available software, and helps you choose the approach that's right for you. Included is detailed information on:

• PGP and PEM — the hottest encryption programs
• DES and IDEA encryption algorithms
• The RSA and DSA public-key algorithms
• Key management — critical in security
• Patent and export issues — who "owns" these programs

1. Privacy and Electronic Mail
1. The Problem
2. Encryption
3. Key Management
4. Authentication
5. Certificates
6. Keeping Your Private Key Private
7. Odds and Ends
8. Patents, Governments, and Export Laws
2. Achieving Electronic-Mail Privacy
9. Requirements and Features
10. Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM)
11. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
12. Comparing PGP and PEM
13. Attacks Against PGP and PEM

1. Pretty Goof Privacy
2. Privacy Enhanced Mail

Descibes PGP, PEM and some other crypto issues. I don't understand how or why to read it. Extremely boring.