future proof file encryption

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Thu Feb 26 15:34:51 CET 2009


On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:54, sk at intertivity.com said:

> i'm not aware of all file formats but you should stick with PKCS#12 format
> for symmetric encryption.
> It's an open standard, so I'm sure openssl and windows encryption can handle

Well kind of.  PKCS#12 is likely the most ugly encryption standard ever
written (or actually not written as it used to be an ad-hoc format).

Better stick with OpenPGP which dates back to the ~18 years old PGP2.

There are several OpenPGP implementations available and if you use GnuPG
you can always copy the sources onto the backup medium as well.  GnuPG
1.4 is highly portable and it is more likely that you won't be able to
read your backup medium in 10 or 20 years than you won't be able to
build GnuPG then.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Auschnahme regelt ein Bundeschgesetz.




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