Support of IDEA is intended "to get rid of all the questions from folks either trying to decrypt old data or migrating keys from PGP to GnuPG", and hence is not recommended for regular use. Starting with versions 1.4.13 and 2.0.20, GnuPG supports IDEA because the last patent of IDEA expired in 2012. It was in fact possible to use IDEA in GnuPG by downloading a plugin for it, however, this might require a license for some uses in countries in which IDEA was patented. įor a long time, it did not support the IDEA encryption algorithm used in PGP. Instead, GnuPG uses a variety of other, non-patented algorithms.
#Gnu privacy guard software
GnuPG does not use patented or otherwise restricted software or algorithms. By default, GnuPG uses the AES symmetrical algorithm since version 2.1, CAST5 was used in earlier versions. GnuPG also supports symmetric encryption algorithms.
It is also possible to add a cryptographic digital signature to a message, so the message integrity and sender can be verified, if a particular correspondence relied upon has not been corrupted. They must always be exchanged carefully to prevent identity spoofing by corrupting public key ↔ "owner" identity correspondences. The resulting public keys may be exchanged with other users in a variety of ways, such as Internet key servers.
GnuPG encrypts messages using asymmetric key pairs individually generated by GnuPG users. The GnuPG 1.x series uses an integrated cryptographic library, while the GnuPG 2.x series replaces this with Libgcrypt. This mode of operation is part of the OpenPGP standard and has been part of PGP from its first version. GnuPG is a hybrid-encryption software program because it uses a combination of conventional symmetric-key cryptography for speed, and public-key cryptography for ease of secure key exchange, typically by using the recipient's public key to encrypt a session key which is used only once.
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