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
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Last Updated Monday, May 05 2008 @ 07:13 AM EDT
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