Re: Gnugpg

Phillip Susi <psusi@xxxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:21:27 -0500

Old Rocker wrote:

Maybe a bit OT, but S/MIME (which I wouldn't call standard....) is much 

It's just as standard as ordinary RFC 822 mime encoded email.
less secure than the algorithms used in GPG and can be broken 
relatively easily.  However, for most purposes its adequate providing 
you haven't got sensitive stuff being encrypted.

This is completely untrue; it uses the the strongest algorithms 
available.  Specifically either MD5 or SHA1 are usually used for 
fingerprinting and RSA or DSA ( typically 1024 bit ) are used for 
public/private key signing/encryption, with typically a 128 bit 3DES or 
AES cipher used to encrypt the message body, using a random key which is 
then encrypted using each recipient's public key.
Baring a compromise of your private key ( meaning both the certificate 
file as well as the password used to encrypt it ), the system is 
unbreakable.

Probably an exaggeration, but don't forget the US Secret Service once 
said that if all the personal computers in the world were set to crack 
one PGP encrypted message, it would taken ten times the age of the 
universe to crack it.  The algorithms used in later versions of PGP and 
now GPG are much more secure, and I'd rather use just one system for my 
encryption and signing that works.

I'd rather use just one as well, and I prefer to use the one that is an 
based on ISO standards ( x.509, PKCS, etc ) rather than a home brewed 
"one off" open source solution.
However, the OP was asking about GPGME, which is a library that allows 
the integration of GPG into a package that doesn't yet support it.

Use libopenssl instead ;)

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Re: Gnugpg

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