PGP 7.0.5 and GPG (Jeff Hall)

[Leigh S. Jones, KR6X]

I'm not really familiar with PGP e-Business Server 7.0.5, but PGP Desktop
7.0.3,
PGP Desktop 7.0.4, and PGP Desktop 7.1.1 are all very capable of
interoperation
with GnuPG.  You should know that presently GnuPG for Windows has no
official
release of the 1.0.7 product, but GnuPG 1.0.6/MingW32 (the latest official
release
of gpg for Windows) has good interoperability with PGP.

To improve the interoperability of gpg with PGP most of the required steps
involve
placing certain options into the "options" file.  Primarily, the "openpgp"
option
provides the required information to gpg to let it know that a modern
version of
PGP is its target.  Earlier PGP versions -- 5.x and earlier -- had different
requirements.

But you're using a late model of PGP.

Being familiar with the PGP graphical user interface makes it likely that
you will
find some comfort in using gpg graphical user interface front ends.  There
are a
variety of these.  I use WinPT.  You should be aware that the gpg GUI front
ends
are a bit unpolished.  Many of them have bugs on one platform or another.
In
fact, gpg1.0.6 has a big bug on WindowsNT -- the protocol for talking to
keyservers is broken on WindowsNT and Windows2000.  But I'm told that it
works
with Windows98 and similar.  What this means is that you would use WinPT for
communication with the keyservers, or else you would use an HTTP keyserver
with a browser and cut and paste the keys from/to the browser window.  It's
a
little inconvenient, so I use the WinPT features for keyserver access.

WinPT's bugginess seems to center around WinNT's clipboard and active
window interface.  So with WinPT I end up having to use files for all
encryption,
decryption, signing, and verification uses.  And for many functions such as
importing keys, creating and editing keys I use the command line gpg without
a GUI.

You may find, however that some of the GUI front ends for gpg work with your
operating system without any problems.  And, updated versions of gpg are
coming out all of the time, unlike PGP.

Within PGP you'd set your encryption preference to AES in lieu of IDEA for
maximum interoperability.  This is under <Options> <Advanced tab>
<Encryption>
<Preferred Algorithm> on the tray menu for PGP 7.0.3/7.0.4 and 7.1.1.  Also,
I suggest allowing all algorithms.

There may be some details that I'm leaving out here, but this should
reassure you
that PGP and gpg work together.

OK -- the options file for gpg1.0.6/MingW32:
------------------------------------------------

# this accommodates use with batch files:
no-greeting

# put your key ID below:
default-key 0xFFFFFFFF

# If you do not pass a recipient to gpg, it will ask for one.
# Using this option you can encrypt to a default key.  Key validation
# will not be done in this case.
# The second form uses the default key as default recipient.

# default-recipient some-user-id
default-recipient-self

# Some of these options override each other and could be
# simplified but I leave them in for my own reasons:

compress-algo 1
cipher-algo AES256
digest-algo SHA1
s2k-cipher-algo 3des
s2k-digest-algo SHA1
openpgp

# Options below are for gpg1.0.7 and should not be used with 1.0.6

# pgp6
# simple-sk-checksum

# The rest of this is pretty standard stuff:
escape-from-lines
lock-once

# put your keyserver choices below
keyserver http://wwwkeys.us.pgp.net

-------------------------------------------------

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Hall" <jhall@csedge.com>
To: <gnupg-users@gnupg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 08:06
Subject: PGP 7.0.5 and GPG


> My company owns PGP e-Business Server 7.0.5.
>
> Our clients want to be able to send us encrypted files without purchasing
> NAI's E-Business Server, because the only version they now sell is the
> enterprise version for $6000 and up.
>
> Can my clients use GPG to encrypt files that I can decrypt with PGP 7.0.5?
> If so, are there any howto's you can point me to?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jeff
>
>
>
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