Seahorse - a Powerful (yet Easy-to-use) PGP Key and Password Manager for Ubuntu

Are you worried about your private communications? Are you concerned that hackers might somehow get into your sensitive information without your consent? If so, then you probably already have a system in place, but for Linux users, a simple way to keep track of all your PGP keys (PGP - Pretty Good Privacy), is a program called Seahorse.

Seahorse has been around for a little while, but was recently added to Ubuntu (new as of 8.04, Hardy Heron), which is where I first heard of it.

I took it for a spin the other day, and although I'm honestly NOT a big user of PGP keys, Seahorse looked to be both thorough and simple to use, which is not an easy feat.

First of all, Seahorse has the ability to keep track of Personal Keys, Trusted Keys, "Other" Keys and Passwords. All these key types are really the same thing, in effect, but the ability to organize them means it's simpler to keep track of what belongs to you, and which you have provided to others (or which you have imported from others).

PGP keys are typically keys used to protect email and documents, If this was what I was after, I would create a key, which I would then use to "lock" all my private correspondence. The only way this correspondence could then be unlocked is if the recipient also had the corresponding private key, which I would have to give them. These keys are encrypted using up to 2048-bit encryption (DSA elgamail), which means... well, for a more in-depth look at PGP encryption than I should use for this article, take a look at this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA

Now, Seahorse is more than just a repository for these keys. It can actually generate these keys, as well as allowing you to export them for sharing with others. You can also import keys you have received from others, for safekeeping. Seahorse also integrates with your keyring (passwords commonly used on your desktop computer), and can cache all your passwords, so you don't have to keep typing them. Finally, for the ultra-paranoid (and not-so-paranoid for those allowing SSH access or desktop sharing over the Internet or an Intranet), you can encrypt your clipboard contents.

But Seahorse also integrates with your Gnome desktop, with applications such as Nautilus (the Gnome file manager) and Gedit (the default text editor for Gnome), so it's easier to deal with PGP keys and such directly, via the Seahorse plugin, than would otherwise be the case.

All in all, Seahorse looks to be a solid, well-designed piece of software that should make it simple, for even the most basic user, to keep email and documents safe and secure, without needing a computer science degree from MIT (where PGP was invented).