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gnupg/doc/announce-2.0.txt

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Hello!

The GNU project is pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG release: Version 2.0.0.

The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is GNU's tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data, create digital signatures, help authenticating using Secure Shell and to provide a framework for public key cryptography. It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the OpenPGP and S/MIME standards.

GnuPG-2 has a different architecture than GnuPG-1 (e.g. 1.4.5) in that it splits up functionality into several modules. However, both versions may be installed alongside without any conflict. In fact, the gpg version from GnuPG-1 is able to make use of the gpg-agent as included in GnuPG-2 and allows for seamless passphrase caching. The advantage of GnuPG-1 is its smaller size and the lack of dependency on other modules at run and build time. We will keep maintaining GnuPG-1 versions because they are very useful for small systems and for server based applications requiring only OpenPGP support.

GnuPG is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GnuPG-2 works best on GNU/Linux or *BSD systems. Other POSIX compliant systems are also supported but have not yet been tested very well.

What's New in GnuPG-2

  • The gpg-agent is the central place to maintain private keys and to cache passphrases. It is implemented as a daemon to be started with a user session.

  • gpgsm is an implementation of the X.509 and CMS standards and provides the cryptographic core to implement the S/MIME protocol. The command line interface is very similar to the one of gpg. This helps adding S/MIME to application currently providing OpenPGP support.

  • scdaemon is a daemon run by gpg-agent to access different types of smart cards using a unified interface.

  • gpg-connect-agent is a tool to help scripts directly accessing services of gpg-agent and scdaemon.

  • gpgconf is a tool to maintain the configuration files of all modules using a well defined API.

  • Support for Dirmngr, a separate package to maintain certificate revocation lists, do OCSP requests and to run LDAP queries.

  • Support for the Secure Shell Agent protocol. In fact, gpg-agent may be used as full replacement of the commonly used ssh-agent daemon.

  • Smart card support for the Secure Shell.

  • Documentation is now done in Texinfo. Thus besides Info, HTML and PDF versions may easily be generated.

  • Man pages for all tools.

Getting the Software

Please follow the instructions found at http://www.gnupg.org/download/ or read on:

GnuPG 2.0.0 may be downloaded from one of the GnuPG mirror sites or direct from ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/ . The list of mirrors can be found at http://www.gnupg.org/mirrors.html . Note, that GnuPG is not available at ftp.gnu.org.

On the mirrors you should find the following files in the gnupg directory:

gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2 (3.8M) gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2.sig

  GnuPG source compressed using BZIP2 and OpenPGP signature.

Please try another mirror if exceptional your mirror is not yet up to date. GnuPG-2 requires a couple of libraries to be installed; see the README file or the output of the configure run for details.

Checking the Integrity

In order to check that the version of GnuPG which you are going to install is an original and unmodified one, you can do it in one of the following ways:

  • If you already have a trusted version of GnuPG installed, you can simply check the supplied signature. For example to check the signature of the file gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2 you would use this command:

    gpg --verify gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2.sig

    This checks whether the signature file matches the source file. You should see a message indicating that the signature is good and made by that signing key. Make sure that you have the right key, either by checking the fingerprint of that key with other sources or by checking that the key has been signed by a trustworthy other key. Note, that you can retrieve the signing key using the command

    finger wk ,at' g10code.com

    or using a key server like

    gpg --recv-key 1CE0C630

    The distribution key 1CE0C630 is signed by the well known key 5B0358A2. If you get an key expired message, you should retrieve a fresh copy as the expiration date might have been prolonged.

    NEVER USE A GNUPG VERSION YOU JUST DOWNLOADED TO CHECK THE INTEGRITY OF THE SOURCE - USE AN EXISTING GNUPG INSTALLATION!

  • If you are not able to use an existing version of GnuPG, you have to verify the SHA-1 checksum. Assuming you downloaded the file gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2, you would run the sha1sum command like this:

    sha1sum gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2

    and check that the output matches this:

c335957368ea88bcb658922e7d3aae7e3ac6896d gnupg-2.0.0.tar.bz2

Internationalization

GnuPG comes with support for 27 languages. Due to a lot of new and changed strings most translations are not entirely complete. However the Turkish and German translators have been very fast in completing their translations. The Russian one came in just a few hours too late. Updates of the other translations are expected for the next releases.

Documentation

We are currently working on an installation guide to explain in more detail how to configure the new features. As of now the chapters on gpg-agent and gpgsm include brief information on how to set up the whole thing. Please watch the GnuPG website for updates of the documentation. In the meantime you may search the GnuPG mailing list archives or ask on the gnupg-users mailing lists for advise on how to solve problems. Many of the new features are around for several years and thus enough public knowledge is already available.

Support

Improving GnuPG is costly, but you can help! We are looking for organizations that find GnuPG useful and wish to contribute back. You can contribute by reporting bugs, improve the software, or by donating money.

Commercial support contracts for GnuPG are available, and they help finance continued maintenance. g10 Code GmbH, a Duesseldorf based company owned and headed by GnuPG's principal author, is currently funding GnuPG development. We are always looking for interesting development projects.

A service directory is available at:

http://www.gnupg.org/service.html

Thanks

We have to thank all the people who helped with this release, be it testing, coding, translating, suggesting, auditing, administering the servers, spreading the word or answering questions on the mailing lists.

Happy Hacking,

The GnuPG Team (David, Werner and all other contributors)