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Could you find the sender's Public PGP (GPG) key from an encoded message?

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    Did you mean "Encoded" or "Encrypted"? Apr 16, 2011 at 14:32

2 Answers 2

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Encrypted messages only contain the recipients' key IDs (and even that can be disabled).

You can only find the sender's key ID if the message was also signed – but the signature is encrypted too, so you're out of luck.

Either way, you would only find the key ID, not the key itself.

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Correct, what @grawity said.

Additionally, some email clients do send the senders public key as another attachment automatically.

And/or you can search for the sender's public key on a keyserver using command line:

gpg --search-keys [email protected]

or alternatively on the keyserver's web interface, like http://pgp.mit.edu/ Sender must have uploaded the key to the keyserver, of course.

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