[Announce] GnuPG 2.3.0 released

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Thu Apr 8 11:05:48 CEST 2021


Hello!

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new GnuPG release:
version 2.3.0.  This release marks the start of public testing releases
eventually leading to a new stable version 2.4.

Although some bugs might linger in the 2.3 versions, they are intended
to replace the 2.2 series.  2.3 may even be used for production purposes
if either the risk of minor regressions is acceptable or the new
features are important.


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.

Three different versions of GnuPG are actively maintained:

- This version (2.3) is the latest development with a lot of new
  features.  This announcement is about the first release of this
  version.

- Version 2.2 is our LTS (long term support) version and guaranteed to
  be maintained at least until the end of 2024.
  See https://gnupg.org/download/index.html#end-of-life

- Version 1.4 is maintained to allow decryption of very old data which
  is, for security reasons, not anymore possible with other GnuPG
  versions.


Noteworthy changes in version 2.3.0 (2021-04-07)
================================================

  * A new experimental key database daemon is provided.  To enable it
    put "use-keyboxd" into gpg.conf and gpgsm.conf.  Keys are stored
    in a SQLite database and make key lookup much faster.

  * New tool gpg-card as a flexible frontend for all types of
    supported smartcards.

  * New option --chuid for gpg, gpgsm, gpgconf, gpg-card, and
    gpg-connect-agent.

  * The gpg-wks-client tool is now installed under bin; a wrapper for
    its old location at libexec is also installed.

  * tpm2d: New daemon to physically bind keys to the local machine.
    See https://gnupg.org/blog/20210315-using-tpm-with-gnupg-2.3.html

  * gpg: Switch to ed25519/cv25519 as default public key algorithms.

  * gpg: Verification results now depend on the --sender option and
    the signer's UID subpacket.  [#4735]

  * gpg: Do not use any 64-bit block size cipher algorithm for
    encryption.  Use AES as last resort cipher preference instead of
    3DES.  This can be reverted using --allow-old-cipher-algos.

  * gpg: Support AEAD encryption mode using OCB or EAX.

  * gpg: Support v5 keys and signatures.

  * gpg: Support curve X448 (ed448, cv448).

  * gpg: Allow use of group names in key listings.  [e825aea2ba]

  * gpg: New option --full-timestrings to print date and time.

  * gpg: New option --force-sign-key.  [#4584]

  * gpg: New option --no-auto-trust-new-key.

  * gpg: The legacy key discovery method PKA is no longer supported.
    The command --print-pka-records and the PKA related import and
    export options have been removed.

  * gpg: Support export of Ed448 Secure Shell keys.

  * gpgsm: Add basic ECC support.

  * gpgsm: Support creation of EdDSA certificates.  [#4888]

  * agent: Allow the use of "Label:" in a key file to customize the
    pinentry prompt.  [5388537806]

  * agent: Support ssh-agent extensions for environment variables.
    With a patched version of OpenSSH this avoids the need for the
    "updatestartuptty" kludge.  [224e26cf7b]

  * scd: Improve support for multiple card readers and tokens.

  * scd: Support PIV cards.

  * scd: Support for Rohde&Schwarz Cybersecurity cards.

  * scd: Support Telesec Signature Cards v2.0

  * scd: Support multiple application on certain smartcard.

  * scd: New option --application-priority.

  * scd: New option --pcsc-shared; see man page for important notes.

  * dirmngr: Support a gpgNtds parameter in LDAP keyserver URLs.

  * The symcryptrun tool, a wrapper for the now obsolete external
    Chiasmus tool, has been removed.

  * Full Unicode support under Windows for the command line.  [#4398]

  Release-info: https://dev.gnupg.org/T5343


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

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

GnuPG 2.3.0 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-2.3.0.tar.bz2 (7380k)
 https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-2.3.0.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-w32-2.3.0_20210407.exe (4560k)
 https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32-2.3.0_20210407.exe.sig

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

A new version of Gpg4win featuring this version of GnuPG will be
released soon.  In the meantime it is possible to install this GnuPG
version on top of Gpg4win 3.1.15.


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-2.3.0.tar.bz2 you would use this command:

     gpg --verify gnupg-2.3.0.tar.bz2.sig gnupg-2.3.0.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-2.3.0.tar.bz2, you run the command like this:

     sha1sum gnupg-2.3.0.tar.bz2

   and check that the output matches the next line:

44d06ef6625378e2d135420543e5fb06b62437ab  gnupg-2.3.0.tar.bz2
6069b70870cb378b1937a79a752ccc3e9951e0a1  gnupg-w32-2.3.0_20210407.tar.xz
2c1a25a57a785cc96ae7ec317de9d1fb513161b7  gnupg-w32-2.3.0_20210407.exe


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

This version of GnuPG has support for 26 languages with Chinese
(traditional and simplified), Czech, French, German, Italian,
Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, 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/T5343 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 still mostly financed by donations.  Three full-time employed
developers as well as two contractors exclusively work on GnuPG and
closely related software like Libgcrypt, GPGME and Gpg4win.

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, or answering questions on the mailing
lists.

The financial support of the governmental CERT of Luxembourg
(GOVCERT.LU) allowed us to develop new and improved features for
smartcards (Yubikey, PIV and Scute) as well as various usability
features.  Thanks.

Many thanks also to all other financial supporters, both corporate and
individuals.  Without you it would not be possible to keep GnuPG in a
good and secure shape and to address all the small and larger requests
made by our users.


Happy hacking,

   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.

p.p.s
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:

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

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

  rsa2048 2011-01-12 [expires: 2021-12-31]
  Key fingerprint = D869 2123 C406 5DEA 5E0F  3AB5 249B 39D2 4F25 E3B6
  Werner Koch (dist sig)

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.

--
"If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy."
                                               - PRZ 1991
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