[Announce] GnuPG 2.0.8 released
Werner Koch
wk at gnupg.org
Thu Dec 20 10:44:54 CET 2007
Hello!
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG-2
release: Version 2.0.8
This is GnuPG's 10th birthday celebration release.
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. 1.4.8) 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 version 3). GnuPG-2 works best on GNU/Linux or *BSD systems.
What's New
===========
* Enhanced gpg-connect-agent with a small scripting language.
* New option --list-config for gpgconf.
* Fixed a crash in gpgconf.
* Gpg-agent now supports the passphrase quality bar of the latest
Pinentry.
* The envvars XAUTHORITY and PINENTRY_USER_DATA are now passed to the
pinentry.
* Fixed the auto creation of the key stub for smartcards.
* Fixed a rare bug in decryption using the OpenPGP card.
* Creating DSA2 keys is now possible.
* New option --extra-digest-algo for gpgsm to allow verification of
broken signatures.
* Allow encryption with legacy Elgamal sign+encrypt keys with option
--rfc2440.
* Windows is now a supported platform.
* Made sure that under Windows the file permissions of the socket are
taken into account. This required a change of our socket emulation
code and changed the IPC protocol under Windows.
Getting the Software
====================
Please follow the instructions found at http://www.gnupg.org/download/
or read on:
GnuPG 2.0.8 may be downloaded from one of the GnuPG mirror sites or
direct from ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gnupg/ . 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 FTP server and ist mirrors you should find the following files
in the gnupg/ directory:
gnupg-2.0.8.tar.bz2 (3568k)
gnupg-2.0.8.tar.bz2.sig
GnuPG source compressed using BZIP2 and OpenPGP signature.
gnupg-2.0.7-2.0.8.diff.bz2 (156k)
A patch file to upgrade a 2.0.7 GnuPG source tree. This patch
does not include updates of the language files.
Note, that we don't distribute gzip compressed tarballs for GnuPG-2.
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-2.0.8.tar.bz2 you would use this command:
gpg --verify gnupg-2.0.8.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 keyserver 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 old version of GnuPG, you have to verify
the SHA-1 checksum. Assuming you downloaded the file
gnupg-2.0.8.tar.bz2, you would run the sha1sum command like this:
sha1sum gnupg-2.0.8.tar.bz2
and check that the output matches the first line from the
following list:
baeb7962f9d3d4628ada78036d1f5d4480aaa2d9 gnupg-2.0.8.tar.bz2
80f8c84834122e988eaeeaddff070097b3a9f383 gnupg-2.0.7-2.0.8.diff.bz2
Internationalization
====================
GnuPG comes with support for 27 languages. Due to a lot of new and
changed strings many translations are not entirely complete. The
German, Polish, Russian, Swedish and Turkish translations are close to
be complete.
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. KDE's KMail is
the most prominent user of GnuPG-2. In fact it has been developed along
with the KMail folks. Mutt users might want to use the configure
option "--enable-gpgme" and "set use_crypt_gpgme" in ~/.muttrc to make
use of GnuPG-2 to enable S/MIME in addition to a reworked OpenPGP
support.
The manual is also available online in HTML format at
http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/
and in Portable Document Format at
http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg.pdf .
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, order
extensions or support or more general by donating money to the Free
Software movement (e.g. http://www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html).
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.
The GnuPG 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, Marcus, Werner and all other contributors)
--
Die Gedanken sind frei. Auschnahme regelt ein Bundeschgesetz.
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