[Announce] GnuPG 2.4.4 released

[Werner Koch]

Hello!

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG
release: version 2.4.4.  This version fixes a couple of bugs, comes with
some new features.  A smartcard related security bug is also fixed and a
tool to check for this flaw is provided.  See below for details.


What is GnuPG
=============

The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG, GPG) is a complete and free implementation
of the OpenPGP and S/MIME standards.

GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign data and communication, features a
versatile key management system as well as access modules for public key
directories.  GnuPG itself is a command line tool with features for easy
integration with other applications.  The separate library GPGME provides
a uniform API to use the GnuPG engine by software written in common
programming languages.  A wealth of frontend applications and libraries
making use of GnuPG are available.  As an universal crypto engine GnuPG
provides support for S/MIME and Secure Shell in addition to OpenPGP.

GnuPG is Free Software (meaning that it respects your freedom).  It can
be freely used, modified and distributed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License.


Noteworthy changes in version 2.4.4
===================================

  * gpg: Do not keep an unprotected smartcard backup key on disk.  See
    https://gnupg.org/blog/20240125-smartcard-backup-key.html for a
    security advisory.  [T6944]

  * gpg: Allow to specify seconds since Epoch beyond 2038 on 32-bit
    platforms.  [T6736]

  * gpg: Fix expiration time when Creation-Date is specified.  [T5252]

  * gpg: Add support for Subkey-Expire-Date.  [rG96b69c1866]

  * gpg: Add option --with-v5-fingerprint.  [T6705]

  * gpg: Add sub-option ignore-attributes to --import-options.
    [rGd4976e35d2]

  * gpg: Add --list-filter properties sig_expires/sig_expires_d.
    [rGbf662d0f93af]

  * gpg: Fix validity of re-imported keys.  [T6399]

  * gpg: Report BEGIN_ status before examining the input.  [T6481]

  * gpg: Don't try to compress a read-only keybox.  [T6811]

  * gpg: Choose key from inserted card over a non-inserted
    card. [T6831]

  * gpg: Allow to create revocations even with non-compliant algos.
    [T6929]

  * gpg: Fix regression in the Revoker keyword of the parameter file.
    [T6923]

  * gpg: Improve error message for expired default keys.  [T4704]

  * gpgsm: Add --always-trust feature.  [T6559]

  * gpgsm: Support ECC certificates in de-vs mode.  [T6802]

  * gpgsm: Major rewrite of the PKCS#12 parser.  [T6536]

  * gpgsm: No not show the pkcs#12 passphrase in debug output.  [T6654]

  * keyboxd: Timeout on failure to get the database lock.  [T6838]

  * agent: Update the key stubs only if really modified.  [T6829]

  * scd: Add support for certain Starcos 3.2 cards.  [rG5304c9b080]

  * scd: Add support for CardOS 5.4 cards.  [rG812f988059]

  * scd: Add support for D-Trust 4.1/4.4 cards.  [rG0b85a9ac09]

  * scd: Add support for Smartcafe Expert 7.0 cards.  [T6919]

  * scd: Add a length check for a new PIN.  [T6843]

  * tpm: Fix keytotpm handling in the agent.  [rG9909f622f6]

  * tpm: Fixes for the TPM test suite.  [T6052]

  * dirmngr: Avoid starting a second instance on Windows via GPGME
    based launching.  [T6833]

  * dirmngr: New option --ignore-crl-extensions.  [T6545]

  * dirmngr: Support config value "none" to disable the default
    keyserver.  [T6708]

  * dirmngr: Implement automatic proxy detection on Windows.  [T5768]

  * dirmngr: Fix handling of the HTTP Content-Length.  [rGa5e33618f4]

  * dirmngr: Add code to support proxy authentication using the
    Negotiation method on Windows.  [T6719]

  * gpgconf: Add commands --lock and --unlock.  [rG93b5ba38dc]

  * gpgconf: Add keyword socketdir to gpgconf.ctl.  [rG239c1fdc28]

  * gpgconf: Adjust the -X command for the new VERSION file format.
    [T6918]

  * wkd: Use export-clean for gpg-wks-client's --mirror and --create
    commands.  [rG2c7f7a5a278c]

  * wkd: Make --add-revocs the default in gpg-wks-client.  New option
    --no-add-revocs.  [rG10c937ee68]

  * Remove duplicated backslashes when setting the homedir.  [T6833]

  * Ignore attempts to remove the /dev/null device.  [T6556]

  * Improve advisory file lock retry strategy.  [T3380]

  * Improve the speedo build system for Unix.  [T6710]

  Release-info: https://dev.gnupg.org/T6578


Getting the Software
====================

Please follow the instructions found at <https://gnupg.org/download/> or
read on:

GnuPG may be downloaded from one of the GnuPG mirror sites or direct
from its primary FTP server.  The list of mirrors can be found at
<https://gnupg.org/download/mirrors.html>.  Note that GnuPG is not
available at ftp.gnu.org.

The GnuPG source code compressed using BZIP2 and its OpenPGP signature
are available here:

 https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2 (7701k)
 https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2.sig

An installer for Windows without any graphical frontend except for a
very minimal Pinentry tool is available here:

 https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32-2.4.4_20240125.exe (5407k)
 https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32-2.4.4_20240125.exe.sig

The source used to build this Windows installer can be found in the same
directory with a ".tar.xz" suffix.

A new release of the full featured Gpg4win installer including this
version of GnuPG is available here:

 https://files.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-4.3.0.exe (34M)
 https://files.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-4.3.0.exe.sig
 https://files.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-4.3.0.tar.xz (219M)
 https://files.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-4.3.0.tar.xz.sig


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 version of GnuPG installed, you can simply
   verify the supplied signature.  For example to verify the signature
   of the file gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2 you would use this command:

     gpg --verify gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2.sig gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2

   This checks whether the signature file matches the source file.
   You should see a message indicating that the signature is good and
   made by one or more of the release signing keys.  Make sure that
   this is a valid key, either by matching the shown fingerprint
   against a trustworthy list of valid release signing keys or by
   checking that the key has been signed by trustworthy other keys.
   See the end of this mail for information on the signing keys.

 * If you are not able to use an existing version of GnuPG, you have
   to verify the SHA-1 checksum.  On Unix systems the command to do
   this is either "sha1sum" or "shasum".  Assuming you downloaded the
   file gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2, you run the command like this:

     sha1sum gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2

   and check that the output matches the next line:

228b3984325fdeebc5e3f2d165c6419a5ebc28de  gnupg-2.4.4.tar.bz2
1be67fe7a98c313d3767554cd48517735d20b7b9  gnupg-w32-2.4.4_20240125.tar.xz
9773a6baae99353aa63d08dba6e643cbecc75de5  gnupg-w32-2.4.4_20240125.exe
6e8ac03208caf76d6e487f8554f2bd607a1b9192  gpg4win-4.3.0.exe


Internationalization
====================

This version of GnuPG has support for 26 languages with Chinese
(traditional and simplified), Czech, French, German, Italian,
Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian
being almost completely translated.


Documentation and Support
=========================

The file gnupg.info has the complete reference manual of the system.
Separate man pages are included as well but they miss some of the
details available only in the manual.  The manual is also available
online at

  https://gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/

or can be downloaded as PDF at

  https://gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg.pdf

You may also want to search the GnuPG mailing list archives or ask on
the gnupg-users mailing list for advise on how to solve problems.  Most
of the new features are around for several years and thus enough public
experience is available.  https://wiki.gnupg.org has user contributed
information around GnuPG and relate software.

In case of build problems specific to this release please first check
https://dev.gnupg.org/T6578 for updated information.

Please consult the archive of the gnupg-users mailing list before
reporting a bug: https://gnupg.org/documentation/mailing-lists.html.
We suggest to send bug reports for a new release to this list in favor
of filing a bug at https://bugs.gnupg.org.  If you need commercial
support go to https://gnupg.com or https://gnupg.org/service.html.

If you are a developer and you need a certain feature for your project,
please do not hesitate to bring it to the gnupg-devel mailing list for
discussion.


Thanks
======

Since 2001 maintenance and development of GnuPG is done by g10 Code GmbH
and has mostly been financed by donations.  Several full-time employed
developers and contractors are working exclusively on GnuPG and closely
related software like Libgcrypt, GPGME, Kleopatra and Gpg4win.

Fortunately, and this is still not common with free software, we have
established a way of financing the development while keeping all our
software free and freely available for everyone.  Our model is similar
to the way RedHat manages RHEL and Fedora: Except for the actual binary
of the MSI installer for Windows and client specific configuration
files, all the software is available under the GNU GPL and other Open
Source licenses.  Thus customers may even build and distribute their own
version of the software as long as they do not use our trademarks
GnuPG Desktop® or GnuPG VS-Desktop®.

We like to thank all the nice people who are helping the GnuPG project,
be it testing, coding, translating, suggesting, auditing, administering
the servers, spreading the word, answering questions on the mailing
lists, or helped with donations.

*Thank you all*

   Your GnuPG hackers


p.s.
This is an announcement only mailing list.  Please send replies only to
the gnupg-users at gnupg.org mailing list.

List of Release Signing Keys:
To guarantee that a downloaded GnuPG version has not been tampered by
malicious entities we provide signature files for all tarballs and
binary versions.  The keys are also signed by the long term keys of
their respective owners.  Current releases are signed by one or more
of these four keys:

  rsa3072 2017-03-17 [expires: 2027-03-15]
  5B80 C575 4298 F0CB 55D8  ED6A BCEF 7E29 4B09 2E28
  Andre Heinecke (Release Signing Key)

  ed25519 2020-08-24 [expires: 2030-06-30]
  6DAA 6E64 A76D 2840 571B  4902 5288 97B8 2640 3ADA
  Werner Koch (dist signing 2020)

  ed25519 2021-05-19 [expires: 2027-04-04]
  AC8E 115B F73E 2D8D 47FA  9908 E98E 9B2D 19C6 C8BD
  Niibe Yutaka (GnuPG Release Key)

  brainpoolP256r1 2021-10-15 [expires: 2029-12-31]
  02F3 8DFF 731F F97C B039  A1DA 549E 695E 905B A208
  GnuPG.com (Release Signing Key 2021)

The keys are available at https://gnupg.org/signature_key.html and
in any recently released GnuPG tarball in the file g10/distsigkey.gpg .
Note that this mail has been signed by a different key.


-- 
Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have
nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about free
speech because you have nothing to say.                - Edward Snowden
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