GnuPG

GnuPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard and is a tool for secure communication and data storage. The software has two main uses. The first is to encrypt data to ensure its privacy. The second is to “sign” data so that others can determine it is authentic and unmodified.

It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the proposed OpenPGP Internet standard as described in RFC 2440.

GnuPG is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications.

The default public key algorithms are DSA and Elgamal, but RSA is also supported. Symmetric algorithms available are AES (with 128, 192, and 256 bit keys), 3DES, Blowfish, CAST5 and Twofish. Digest algorithms available are MD5, RIPEMD/160, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512. Compression algorithms available are ZIP, ZLIB, and BZIP2 (with libbz2 installed).

Features include:

  • Full replacement of PGP
  • Does not use any patented algorithms
  • Can be used as a filter program
  • Full OpenPGP implementation
  • Better functionality than PGP and some security enhancements over PGP 2
  • Decrypts and verifies PGP 5, 6 and 7 messages
  • Supports ElGamal, DSA, RSA, AES, 3DES, Blowfish, Twofish, CAST5, MD5, SHA-1, RIPE-MD-160 and TIGER
  • Easy implementation of new algorithms using extension modules
  • The User ID is forced to be in a standard format
  • Supports key and signature expiration dates
  • Online help system
  • Optional anonymous message receivers
  • Integrated support for HKP keyservers
  • Clears signed patch files which can still be processed by patch
  • English, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, French, German, Japanese, Italian,
    Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portuguese), Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish language support

Website: www.gnupg.org
Support: Manuals
Developer: Maintainer: Werner Koch Numerous developers
License: GNU GPL v3+

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