"Bad key"

Graham graham@todd276.worldonline.co.uk
Sat, 13 Jan 2001 16:26:26 GMT


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi there, Piotr Kasztelowicz,

On 13 January 2001, I received the following message from you regarding
""Bad key""

PK> I have created key pair on GNUpg - the public contains standard
PK> DSS1024 for signing and g1024 for encrytpting. If I used GNUpg
PK> all is ok. But the keys, which I have exported to PGP 6.5.3
PK> does not work correctyl? If I have encrytpting a message
PK> by GNUpg (I have used Gnupg with pine+pgp4pine the option
PK> - --force-v3-sigs is set in .pgp3pinerc) this is correctly
PK> decoded by GNUpg but on PGP 6.5.3 the "bad key" has been reported
PK> 
PK> What I have made wrong?
PK> 
PK> Piotr

You have probably been doing nothing wrong.  I noticed you were using
Eudora Light under Windows for your MUA, and so the answer is the way
in which PGP for Windows relates to GnuPG.

Keys generated by GnuPG will be recognised by PGP 7, put on the
keyring without fuss, but for versions of PGP before that, you will
have problems putting a GnuPG generated key on your keyring, or even
decrypting messages encoded using keys generated by GnuPG.  On the
other hand, GnuPG for Windows will recognise all PGP generated keys
with the exception of PGP 2.6.3, but has no keyserver support or
access.

GnuPG uses the Blowfish algorithm which PGP 6.5.x does not support, so
you will get a "bad key message" or even a "bad parameter" message
from PGPkeys when attempting to put a GnuPG generated key on your
keyring.  The situation is not so bad with PGP 7, as it's designed to
be (partially) backwards compatible.

If you want to use your GnuPG keys under Windows, I would suggest the
best way is to put GnuPG for Windows on your PC, and then use one of
the Windows front ends (WinPT, GnuPGShell) with your existing MUA, or
get Becky!2 with the BkGnuPG plug-in.  Then use PGPkeys for keyserver
access, putting up with the annoying error messages.  I use PGP 6.5.8
and GnuPG 1.0.4 under Windows, and access them both through Becky!2
using the plug-ins, but accessing keyservers through PGPkeys and
through web pages.

Hope this helps........

Graham                    reply to: graham@todd276.worldonline.co.uk

Written on 13 January 2001 16:10:37
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPB2 version 0.01.3

iQA/AwUBOmCBay7i2PqZ2xC9EQIrOACcCd3vz1wa0fwlFSPWNleQJ88BkWYAoKRd
yvUvLP5tHT2CaJpKAqZJpDni
=3qLd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
Archive is at http://lists.gnupg.org - Unsubscribe by sending mail
with a subject of  "unsubscribe"  to gnupg-users-request@gnupg.org