GNUPG 2.* and AIX - questions

[Damien Goutte-Gattat]

On 02/15/2015 12:16 PM, Michael Felt wrote:
> My key question is about the difference between v1.X and v2.X - are there
> security elements in v2 that are missing/weaker in v1 - or are the
> differences mainly that v2 supports/is always GUI while v1 is always CLI.

The gpg program is always CLI-only, both in GnuPG 1.x and GnuPG 2.x.

As far as I know, the available GUI frontends can work with all versions 
(that’s at least the case for GPA and the Enigmail plugin).

What’s missing in GnuPG 1.x includes:

* elliptic curve-based cryptography, which was introduced in GnuPG 2.1;

* all the X.509 and S/MIME stuff—GnuPG 1.x deals with OpenPGP only;

* support for SSH authentication;

* the GnuPG Agent, only provided with 2.x (although GnuPG 1.x *can* use 
an Agent if one is available and running);

* Maybe some other things, but I guess those are the most important.

Overall, and ignoring the above features only present in 2.x, one of the 
main differences between 1.x and 2.x is that GnuPG 1.x is quite 
monolithic while GnuPG 2.x is more modular (with many functions 
delegated to auxiliary programs outside of the gpg binary, such as the 
GnuPG Agent, the Smartcard Daemon, Dirmngr...) and has more 
dependencies. As you have experienced yourself, this can make GnuPG 2.x 
more difficult to compile on some platforms.


Damien

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