FireGPG Firefox Add-on

FireGPG is an OpenPGP MIME-compliant add-on to Firefox that allows you to select some text on a web page (or entered in a form) and perform some cryptographic operations on it.

This add-on provides immediate security benefits. It can allow you to easily and quickly encrypt a message and send it over a public channel without even having to leave your browser. For example, you can send a (short) secret message to someone by encrypting it and posting the block in a public forum or on a public blog– as long as the recipients have the correct key, they can decrypt it. This add-on can also be used to generate digital signatures, providing both integrity and non-repudiation.

Below is an example of some encrypted text sent via Gmail and the results of FireGPG’s decryption:

Although it doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking in terms of functionality, having access to these features with just a right-click within a browser window can certainly come in handy. And for people who want the benefits of public-key cryptography but their web-based email clients don’t support it, this might just scratch that security itch.

You can get FireGPG here.

NOTE: FireGPG is just the add-on that provides an interface to the PGP functionality. You will also need the software to manage keys and perform the cryptographic operations. For this purpose, FireGPG requires GnuPG– a free open-source implementation of OpenPGP. Get it here.

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