Hi All, This is an interesting thread and I want to share my experience. Part of what I do is train people for a secure position. When I am explaining compartmentalization, I use a two-key lock metaphor to help describe classification levels and need-to-know. The metaphor only deals with 'opening' the lock. I think that may be where the inappropriate use got 'appropriated'.
Bear in mind that my noobs are generally at least technically conversant. I first describe that the public and private key are calculated together and are mathematically linked. Depending on the audience I don't go over the modulus formulae but I do then describe what can be encrypted with one key can be decrypted with the other. Then I talk about the actual mechanism for doing so. I find that if they have a least a cursory understanding of what they are trying to do, it helps a lot in understanding the actual command line/GUI sequence I leave signing until after I describe the public key/private key encryption paradigm. I find that combining the two topics leads to a lot of confusion. Once they understand assymetric encryption then I go on to digital signatures and why they are important (Man in the Middle is an excellent way to introduce this topic). HTH Thanks, Bob Cavanaugh > -----Original Message----- > From: Gnupg-users [mailto:gnupg-users-boun...@gnupg.org] On Behalf Of > Robert J. Hansen > Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 7:15 AM > To: A.T. Leibson; gnupg-users@gnupg.org > Subject: Re: Teaching GnuPG to noobs > > > What has your experience been teaching inexperienced users how to use > > GnuPG properly? > > Varies between extremely good and extremely bad with very little in- > between. When addressing people who have the motivation to learn and > the ability to think analytically, it's been great. When addressing people > who > lack one or the other it's frustrating, and when addressing people who lack > both it makes me prefer dental surgery. > > > What are common pitfalls on the part of the instructor? > > The most common one I've found is not understanding the material as well > as they think. This tends to come through most in the metaphors an > instructor uses. For instance, I frequently encounter instructors who tell > the > class to imagine a lock with two keys, one that locks it and one that unlocks > it, > and they proceed to use that lock metaphor to explain crypto. > > It's absurd. Who in the class has ever seen a lock with two keys, one that > locks it and one that unlocks? The metaphor's ridiculous: the locks the > students are familiar with require *no* keys to lock and only one key to > unlock. > > When I see an instructor use inappropriate metaphors, who doesn't > understand that these metaphors are inappropriate, it makes me think the > instructor has a superficial and fragile understanding of the material. > And frankly, there are a lot of those people out there. > > (One metaphor I've been playing with lately, but haven't decided yet > whether it's a good one, involves magical sealing wax. This magical sealing > wax can only be cut or shaped by one person -- the person who owns it. If > you seal a message with this person's magical sealing wax, only that message > recipient can open it. And if you see that someone has pressed a signet ring > into it, you know the person who owns the wax did it, since only they could > shape it. So if Alice were to affix her magical sealing wax to a message and > press her signet ring into it, and then fold the letter and seal it with Bob's > magical sealing wax, only Bob could cut the magical sealing wax to read the > message and he would know that only Alice could have put her signet on the > blob of wax at the end of the letter. > > Is magical sealing wax a better metaphor than a lock with two keys? > Yes. Is it better *enough*? I don't know yet.) > > > What aspects are the most challenging for new users to understand? > > Anything that gets explained with a poorly chosen metaphor. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users