The GNU Privacy Guard

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

News Flashes

In addition to the English, German and Spanish Mini-Howto, we now have a French one. Thanks to Jean-François Dindart.

A French, a German and a Spanish version of this website is now available. Thanks to Gilbert Fernand, Walter Koch and Horacio Menezo Ganau.

GnuPG 1.0 is now available!

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.
English, 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

Version 1.0.0 has been released on September 7th, 1999.

Supported Systems

GnuPG works fine on GNU/Linux with x86, alpha, mips, 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,
Windows 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).

Credits

The GNU Privacy Guard has been created by the GnuPG team: Matthew Skala, Michael Roth, Niklas Hernaeus, Rémi Guyomarch and Werner Koch. Gael Queri, Gregory Steuck, Janusz A. Urbanowicz, Marco d'Itri, Thiago Jung Bauermann, Urko Lusa and Walter Koch did the official translations. Mike Ashley is working on the GNU Privacy Handbook.

The following people helped greatly by suggesting improvements, testing, fixing bugs, providing resources and doing other important tasks: Allan Clark, Anand Kumria, Ariel T Glenn, Bodo Moeller, Bryan Fullerton, Brenno de Winter, Brian Moore, Brian Warner, Caskey L. Dickson, Cees van de Griend, Charles Levert, Christian von Roques, Christopher Oliver, Christian Recktenwald, Daniel Eisenbud, Daniel Koenig, David Ellement, Detlef Lannert, Dirk Lattermann, Ed Boraas, Enzo Michelangeli, Ernst Molitor, Fabio Coatti, Felix von Leitner, Frank Heckenbach, Frank Stajano, Gaël Quéri, Greg Louis, Greg Troxel, Gregory Steuck, Geoff Keating, Harald Denker, Hendrik Buschkamp, Holger Schurig, Hugh Daniel, Ian McKellar, J Horacio MG, Janusz A. Urbanowicz, James Troup, Jean-loup Gailly, Jens Bachem, Joachim Backes, John A. Martin, Johnny Teveßen, Jörg Schilling, Jun Kuriyama, Karl Fogel, Karsten Thygesen, Katsuhiro Kondou, Kazu Yamamoto, Lars Kellogg-Stedman, Marco d'Itri, Mark Adler, Mark Elbrecht, Markus Friedl, Martin Kahlert, Martin Hamilton, Martin Schulte, Matthew Skala, Max Valianskiy, Michael Fischer v. Mollard, Michael Roth, Michael Sobolev, Nicolas Graner, NIIBE Yutaka, Niklas Hernaeus, Nimrod Zimerman, N J Doye, Oliver Haakert, Oskari Jääskeläinen, Paul D. Smith, Philippe Laliberte, Peter Gutmann, QingLong, Ralph Gillen, Rat, Reinhard Wobst, Rémi Guyomarch, Reuben Sumner, Roland Rosenfeld, Ross Golder, Serge Munhoven, SL Baur, Stefan Karrmann, Stefan Keller, Steffen Ullrich, Steffen Zahn, Steven Bakker, Susanne Schultz, Thiago Jung Bauermann, Thomas Roessler, Tom Spindler, Tom Zerucha, Tomas Fasth, Thomas Mikkelsen, Ulf Möller, Urko Lusa, Walter Koch, Wim Vandeputte and Gerlinde Klaes.

This software has been made possible by the previous work of Chris Wedgwood, Jean-loup Gailly, Jon Callas, Mark Adler, Martin Hellmann Paul Kendall, Philip R. Zimmermann, Peter Gutmann, Philip A. Nelson, Taher ElGamal, Torbjorn Granlund, Whitfield Diffie, some unknown NSA mathematicians and all the folks who have worked hard to create complete and free operating systems.

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Updated: 1999-11-08 wkoch