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Revised December 3 1997 HTMLized December 8 1997 New or updated sections are displayed in red - if this line is not
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| Index |
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| Disclaimer |
Disclaimer: some of this information may be outdated or otherwise inaccurate.
Use it at your own risk. The master copy of this FAQ is at http://www.cryptography.org/getpgp.htm (and at http://www.cryptography.org/getpgp.txt for the text-only version). The official (much more complete) PGP FAQ is available at: http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/.
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| What is the latest version of PGP? |
PGPmail commercial version: 5. 5
PGP freeware, USA-legal: 2.6.2, 5.0, or 5.5 (depending on your platform)
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| Where can I get the commercial PGP? |
For further information see: http://www.pgp.com Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. (Headquarters)
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| Where can I FTP PGP in North America? |
If you are in the USA or Canada, you can get PGP by using one of these URLs:
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| Where is PGP on CompuServe? |
GO NCSAFORUM. Follow the instructions there go gain access to Library 12: Export Controlled.
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| What Bulletion Board System (BBS) carry PGP? |
Many BBS carry PGP. The following carry recent versions of PGP and allow free downloads of PGP. US
Switzerland
Germany
Netherland
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| Where can I FTP PGP outside of north america? |
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| How can I get PGP by email? |
If you have access to email, but not to FTP, send a message saying to
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| Where can I get more PGP information? |
The PGP Users Mailing List home page at http://pgp.rivertown.net contains many, many PGP related resources, including resources on privacy, anonymous remailers, and other related fields. The PGP-Users list archives are also linked to the page as is an HTML version of the PGP-FAQ (may not be the most recent), the PGP documenation, resources for MacPGP, links to another mailing list dedicated to PGPfone (which includes one of its authors, Will Price) and the one of a kind, PGPfone Registry, where PGPfone users who would like to test PGPfone with each other can leave messages in a browsable data base to let others find them to connect with each other.
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| Can I get PGP documentation in my own language? |
Yes. You can get the official PGP documentation in serveral languages.
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| What compatibility issues exist between PGP 5.x and earlier versions? |
PGP 5.0 introduces some new algorithms for both public key and conventional
encryption. These changes are good from both technical (security &
efficiency) and political (patent) standpoints. With the death of the
Diffie-Hellman key exchange patent, the freeware PGP new algorithms are 100%
free of patent problems, and free of legalese such as come with the RSAREF
toolkit. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange key size limit is also larger than
the old RSA limit, so PGP encryption is actually more secure, now. The new
SHA1 hash function is better than MD5, so signatures are more secure, now,
too. The conventional encryption used is all sound, and definitely not the
weak link in the chain. This much is good news. The bad news, of course, is that there will be some interoperability problems, since no earlier versions of PGP can handle these algorithms. How this affects you depends on the PGP version that you have. There are really 3 versions of PGP called PGP 5.0. The freeware edition can only generate and use the new (faster, more secure, patent-problem-free) algorithms. There is a really cheap (cheaper than one S/MIME key certificate) upgrade to PGP 5.0 for Eudora users that will let you use the old RSA keys as well. Then, of course, the full commercial version of PGP 5.0 can handle both old and new algorithms and message formats equally well. If you want to handle both, you need to either keep both an old and new freeware PGP around, upgrade to one of the versions of PGP 5.0 that can handle the old keys.
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| What are some good PGP books? |
Protect Your Privacy: A Guide for PGP Users PGP: Pretty Good Privacy E-Mail Security: How to Keep Your Electronic Mail Private "Covers PGP/PEM" The Computer Privacy Handbook: A Practical Guide to E-Mail Encryption, Data Protection, and PGP Privacy Software THE OFFICIAL PGP USER'S GUIDE PGP SOURCE CODE AND INTERNALS How to Use PGP
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| Is PGP legal? |
Pretty Good Privacy is legal if you follow these rules: Don't export PGP from the USA except to Canada, or from Canada except to the USA, without a license.
If you are in the USA, use either the commercial PGP (licensed for commercial
use) or MIT PGP using RSAREF (limited to personal, noncommercial use), or use
one of the versions of PGP that doesn't support RSA encryption and digital
signatures and use the Diffie-Hellman and DSA algorithms (that aren't
patented).
Outside of the USA, where RSA is not patented, you may prefer to use a
version of PGP (2.6.3i) that doesn't use RSAREF to avoid the restrictions of
that license.
If you are in a country where the IDEA cipher patent holds in software (including the USA and some countries in Europe), make sure you are licensed to use the IDEA cipher commercially before using PGP commercially. (No separate license is required to use the freeware PGP for personal, noncommercial use). For direct IDEA licensing, contact Ascom Systec:
Erhard Widmer, Ascom Systec AG, Dep't. CMVV Phone +41 64 56 59 83
Peter Hartmann, Ascom Systec AG, Dep't. CMN Phone +41 64 56 59 45
Fax: +41 64 56 59 90
e-mail: IDEA@ascom.ch
Mail address: Gewerbepark, CH-5506 Maegenwil (Switzerland)
Viacrypt has an exclusive marketing agreement for commercial
distribution of Philip Zimmermann's copyrighted code. (Selling
shareware/freeware disks or connect time is OK). This restriction does
not apply to PGP 3.0, since it is a complete rewrite by Colin Plumb.
If you modify PGP (other than porting it to another platform, fixing a bug, or adapting it to another compiler), don't call it PGP (TM) or Pretty Good Privacy (TM) without Philip Zimmermann's permission.
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| What is Philip Zimmermann's legal status? |
Philip Zimmermann was under investigation for alleged violation of export regulations, with a grand jury hearing evidence for about 28 months, ending 11 January 1996. The Federal Government chose not to comment on why it decided to not prosecute, nor is it likely to. The Commerce Secretary stated that he would seek relaxed export controls for cryptographic products, since studies show that U. S. industry is being harmed by current regulations. Philip endured some serious threats to his livelihood and freedom, as well as some very real legal expenses, for the sake of your right to electronic privacy. The battle is won, but the war is not over. The regulations that caused him so much grief and which continue to dampen cryptographic development, harm U. S. industry, and do violence to the U. S. National Security by eroding the First Ammendment of the U. S. Constitution and encouraging migration of cryptographic industry outside of the U. S. A. are still on the books. If you are a U. S. Citizen, please write to your U. S. Senators, Congressional Representative, President, and Vice President pleading for a more sane and fair cryptographic policy. Several legislative efforts will if successful relax the export controls of cryptographic software from the U.S. See:
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| Can I use encryption legaly? |
Within the U.S. there is no legal obstacle for use of strong
encryption. In an ideal world everyone would have the right to use encryption. Unfortunately, your right to use encryption may be restricted or does not exist. In France, the goverment prohibits the use of encryption without prior permission, that you won't get if you are a private citizen. Germany is said to consider banning the use and distribution of strong cryptographic software in the name of "national security." United Kingdom may adopt a key escrow system. For a recent update on the legal situation see:
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| How do I select a good secure passphrase? |
See:
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| What other file encryption (DOS, Mac) tools are there? |
PGP can do conventional encryption only of a file (-c) option, but you might want to investigate some of the other alternatives if you do this a lot. Alternatives include Quicrypt and Atbash2 for DOS, DLOCK for DOS & UNIX, Curve Encrypt (for the Mac), HPACK (many platforms), and a few others. Quicrypt is interesting in that it comes in two flavors: shareware exportable and registered secure. Atbash2 is interesting in that it generates ciphertext that can be read over the telephone or sent by Morse code. DLOCK is a no-frills strong encryption program with complete source code. Curve Encrypt has certain user-friendliness advantages. HPACK is an archiver (like ZIP or ARC), but with strong encryption. A couple of starting points for your search are: U.S. only availability:
International availability:
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| How do I securely delete files (DOS)? |
If you have the Norton Utilities, Norton WipeInfo is pretty good. I use DELETE.EXE in del121.zip, which is really good at deleting existing files, but doesn't wipe "unused" space.
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| What do I do about the pass phrase in my Windows swap file? |
The nature of Windows is that it can swap any memory to disk at any time, meaning that all kinds of interesting things could end up in your swap file.
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| Where do I get PGPfone(tm)? |
PGPfone is for private phone calls using a modem or the Internet.
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| Where do I get Nautilus? |
Bill Dorsey, Pat Mullarky, and Paul Rubin have come out with a program called Nautilus that enables you to engage in secure voice conversations between people with multimedia PCs and modems capable of at least 7200 bps (but 14.4 kbps is better). See:
The official Nautilus homepage is at:
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| How do I encrypt my disk on-the-fly? |
Secure File System (SFS) is a DOS device driver that encrypts an entire partition on the fly using SHA in feedback mode. Secure Drive also encrypts an entire DOS partition, using IDEA, which is patented. Secure Device is a DOS device driver that encrypts a virtual, file-hosted volume with IDEA. Cryptographic File System (CFS) is a Unix device driver that uses DES. U.S. only availability: International availability:
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| Where is PGPs competition? |
S/MIME is gaining a foothold on the secure email market, but my experience with it has been rather negative. Current implementations of S/MIME (1) don't allow secure key lengths to be used except in "U. S. Only" versions, (2) require payment of an annual fee to a key certification authority who verifies only that you got email to your key certificate's address at least once, (3) have much more limited key management facilities than PGP, and (4) the first time I tried to make S/MIME work, it flat out failed to perform as advertised. On the positive side, S/MIME is integrated into email packages almost as well as PGP is integrated into Eudora, and once the kinks are taken out, the secure version of S/MIME (1024-bit RSA keys and 128-bit RC-2 keys) will be good enough for most people. The "export" edition (512-bit RSA keys and 40-bit RC-2 keys) is a very bad idea, because it gives a false sense of security. RIPEM is the third most popular freeware email encryption package. I like PGP better for lots of reasons, but if for some reason you want to check or generate a PEM signature, RIPEM is available at ripem.msu.edu. There is also an exportable RIPEM/SIG. U.S. only availability: International availability:
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| How do I publish my PGP public key? |
Send mail to one of these addresses with the single word help in the subject line to find out how to use them. These servers sychronize keys with each other. There are other key servers, too.
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| How do I retrieve a PGP public key using a WWW browser? |
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| Can I submit my public key to a "clean" certified database? |
For US $20/year or so, you can have your key officially certified and
published in a "clean" key database that is much less susceptible to
denial-of-service attacks than the other key servers. Send mail to
info-pgp@Four11.com for information,
or look at http://www.Four11.com/.
Of course, you can always send your public key directly to the parties you wish to correspond with.
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| Can I copy and redistribute this FAQ? |
Yes. Please only do so in appropriate forums, and provide pointers to the home location of this FAQ.
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| Who maintains this FAQ? |
Michael Paul Johnson (mpj@ebible.org) maintains this FAQ. My PGP public key
is at ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/mpjkey.asc (includes both RSA and DH keys).
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| Coypright of this HTML version |
This HTML version of the FAQ has been written by Florian Helmberger (helmberg@magnet.at)
with the friendly permission from Michael Paul Johnson. Copyright © 1996, 97 Florian Helmberger - no modifications please. |
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Thanks to Athens GeoCities for providing this page. (last updated 97/12/08) |