GnuPG - The GNU Privacy Guard

# The GNU Privacy Guard

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> Das Briefgeheimnis sowie das Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis sind unverletzlich.
> Grundgesetz, Artikel 10, Abs 1.

## News Flashes

GnuPG 1.0 is now scheduled for early September.

There will be a BOF session at the 6th Linux Congress, taking place at Augsburg/Germany from Sep. 8th to 10th.

## Overview

GnuPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP. Because it does not use IDEA or RSA it can be used without any restrictions. GnuPG is a RFC2440 (OpenPGP) compliant application.

## Features

- Full replacement of PGP.
- Does not use any patented algorithms.
- GPLed, written from scratch.
- Can be used as a filter program.
- Full OpenPGP implementation.
- Better functionality than PGP and some security enhancements.
- Decrypts and verifies PGP 5.x messages.
- Supports ElGamal (signature and encryption), DSA, 3DES, Blowfish, Twofish, CAST5, MD5, SHA-1, RIPE-MD-160 and TIGER.
- Easy implementation of new algorithms using extension modules.
- User id is created in a standard format.
- Support for a key expiration date.
- French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian and Spanish language support.
- Online help system
- Optional anonymous message receivers.
- Integrated support for HKP keyservers (wwwkeys.pgp.net)
- and many more things....

## Status

GnuPG is now in beta test and we are working towards a 1.0 version. We are currently fixing bugs and changing some things - it may turn out that some versions are not quite useful for all purposes (especially on non GNU/Linux boxes). As with the Linux kernel and many other projects, an odd minor number (0.9) means that it is a development release and you may have trouble with it.

Tasks we are currently working on:

- Enhance RFC2440 and GnuPG with a MDC (modification detection code). This will not go into 1.0 due to delays with the OpenPGP WG.
- Fixing bugs ;-).
- A user manual.

## Supported Systems

GnuPG works fine on GNU/Linux with x86, alpha, sparc64, m68k or powerpc CPUs. (x86 is my primary development system, the other CPUs are only checked from time to time)

It compiles okay on GNU/Hurd but because Mach has no random device, it should not be used for real work. It should be easy to add the random device driver from Linux to the Hurd - Anyone?

FreeBSD with x86 CPU works fine.
OpenBSD works fine (x86 CPU?).

GnuPG compiles and runs on many more systems, but due to the lack of a well tested entropy source, it should be used with some caution. We have positive reports on these systems:

HPUX v9.x and v10.x with HPPA CPU,
IRIX v6.3 with MIPS R10000 CPU,
OSF1 V4.0 with Alpha CPU,
OS/2 version 2.
SCO UnixWare/7.1.0.
SunOS, Solaris on Sparc and x86,
USL Unixware v1.1.2,
Windoze 95 and WNT with x86 CPUs.
[More systems? Please tell me.]

## Key Information

The following key is used to sign GnuPG distributions:

    pub  1024D/57548DCD 1998-07-07 Werner Koch (gnupg sig) <dd9jn@gnu.org>
         Key fingerprint = 6BD9 050F D8FC 941B 4341  2DCC 68B7 AB89 5754 8DCD

You can download the key, retrieve it from the key servers or get it from the GnuPG source tree (g10/pubring.asc).

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmaster@gnupg.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: 1999-09-01 wkoch

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