Post AzEZX79Ce1EU8X4bOi by whitequark@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by whitequark@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #AzEZX79Ce1EU8X4bOi by whitequark@mastodon.social
       2025-10-14T22:11:28Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       hey. hey do you know the `-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----` thing you see in files with key material? the files whose name ends in .pem? do you know what .pem stands for?i just learned it stands for "Privacy-Enhanced Mail" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy-Enhanced_Mail
       
 (DIR) Post #AzEZX7tHsg60RSdPEG by lafp@cornputer.org
       2025-10-14T22:12:32Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @whitequark this is a PGP (Pretty Good Post)
       
 (DIR) Post #AzEZXBjrZevyNOFw5w by clacke@libranet.de
       2025-10-15T13:04:14Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @whitequark Wow! If somebody asked me, I probably would have confabulated and been 100% certain it was Printable Encoding something something and that it came straight out of the ASN.1 world.
       
 (DIR) Post #AzEZXGSg0z9p1XFmV6 by chrisvest@mastodon.social
       2025-10-14T22:18:37Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @whitequark yeah, I knew this. I … try not to think too much about it. The mail part is why the format has uh, opinions about line lengths.
       
 (DIR) Post #AzEZXUs0Rbjli9DCvQ by fanf@mendeddrum.org
       2025-10-15T03:12:23Z
       
       2 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @whitequark yeah pem is surprisingly old and influentialhmm that wikipedia article undersells it, the first pem rfc was published in 1987 which i find kind of incredible https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc989 tho it is mostly the first definition of base64 and ascii armoring, the DER business came later