PGP(5.0) User Manual PGP(5.0)
NAME
PGP - A suite of tools for encrypting, decrypting and ver-
ifying messages.
DESCRIPTION
There are two files in this package, but several addi-
tional modes of operation are available via symbolic
links:
pgp(1) is the main cryptographic engine of the PGP
package. However, invoking it as itself merely
prints a usage summary.
pgpe(1) is executed to encrypt, or encrypt and
sign, files. It is a link to pgp(1).
pgps(1) is executed to only sign files. It is a
link to pgp(1).
pgpv(1) is executed to only verify or decrypt
signed or encrypted files. It is a link to pgp(1).
pgpk(1) is the key management application, which is
used to generate, retrieve and send keys, as well
as manage trust.
Public key cryptography must be fully understood by the
user to be useful. A successful PGP user must be familiar
with public key cryptography in general, and some PGP-spe-
cific concepts (such as the web of trust). If you feel
comfortable with your own level of knowledge on this sub-
ject, your first step is probably going to be to invoke
pgpk(1) to generate a key.
FILES
~/.pgp/pgp.cfg
User-specific configuration file. In previous
releases, this file was called config.txt. See
pgp.cfg(5) for further details.
MIGRATION
Users migrating from earlier versions of PGP will need to
manually migrate the following configuration files:
~/.pgp/config.txt is now ~/.pgp/pgp.cfg. This file
may be copied manually. If not copied, internal
defaults will be used. This file is largely
unchanged in 5.0. See pgp.cfg(5) for more informa-
tion on this file.
~/.pgp/pubring.pgp is now ~/.pgp/pubring.pkr. You
may copy your old public keyring, or allow 5.0 to
generate a new keyring for you.
PGP JULY 1997 (v5.0) 1
PGP(5.0) User Manual PGP(5.0)
~/.pgp/secring.pgp is now ~/.pgp/secring.skr. You
may copy your old private keyring. Even if you do
this, you are encouraged to generate a new
DSS/Diffie-Hellman key to allow communication with
all 5.0 users.
~/.pgp/language.txt is now ~/.pgp/language50.txt.
This file should not be copied from your previous
installation, as it is completely different in 5.0.
If this file is not present, internal defaults will
be used.
PGP JULY 1997 (v5.0) 2
PGP(5.0) User Manual PGP(5.0)
AUTHORS
A cast of thousands. This is, of course, derived directly
from the work of Phil R. Zimmerman <prz@pgp.com>. Major
contributors to this release include:
Unix Development
Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
Hal Finney <hal@pgp.com>
Mark McArdle <markm@pgp.com>
Brett A. Thomas <quark@baz.com>
Mark Weaver <mhw@pgp.com>
Be Development
Mark Elrod <elrod@pgp.com>
Brett A. Thomas <quark@baz.com>
Library Development
Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
Colin Plumb <colin@pgp.com>
Hal Finney <hal@pgp.com>
Mark Weaver <mhw@pgp.com>
Unix Beta Testing
Steve Gilbert <darkelf@redcloud.org>
Mike Shappe <mshappe@jeeves.net>
Man Pages
Brett A. Thomas <quark@baz.com>
BUGS
pgp_old (backwards compatibility mode) is unimplemented.
Keyserver support should be more informative with unknown
protocols.
URL parsing uses static buffers and is vulnerable to over-
flow attacks.
The PAGER directive in pgp.cfg doesn't work.
No UI support for corporate message recovery keys (MRK).
"Echo passphrase" not supported.
On systems with /dev/random, we should read in the avail-
able random bytes every runtime.
Keyserver support should ask for verification prior to
adding keys to your keyring.
Batch mode doesn't yet do all that it should (specifi-
cally, "simple batch mode," which will allow non-interac-
tive execution of PGP, hasn't been implemented).
PGP JULY 1997 (v5.0) 3
PGP(5.0) User Manual PGP(5.0)
In batch mode, there is not yet any user interface to
allow the specification of file descriptors to use for
certain kinds of output.
PGP does not warn you when encrypting to both RSA and
DSS/Diffie-Hellman keys, which will cause problems for
users of versions 2.6.2, 4.0 and 4.5.
Conventional mode encryption causes a crash.
The -b option to pgpv(1) is not implemented.
pgpk -rs (to remove signatures from keys) may not do the
right thing if you have a large number of signatures and
revocations on the key.
Encrypting to multiple receivers, where one receiver is
unknown, produces no output file.
pgpk(1) doesn't warn you if you specify multiple user IDs
on a command that doesn't allow multiple user IDs.
pgpv -m ("more" mode) and "eyes-only" decryption is not
displaying properly. It is suggested that your pipe the
output of pgpv(1) into your pager of preference until this
is fixed.
pgpk(1) doesn't pay attention to the +force option to
force file overwrite; it stops to ask for confirmation.
Automatic passphrase specification isn't documented or
implemented consistently across all applications.
Multipart armoring doesn't handle all possible permuta-
tions - specifically, it does not work properly if all the
sections are in one file, or only the first file is named
on the command line.
There is currently no way to specify just a secret or pub-
lic keyring for an operation.
pgp --version doesn't work. Use pgpk --version or one of
the other commands, instead.
pgpv -p, to "preserve" the original input filename, is not
yet supported.
pgpk -c, which checks signatures on a key or your keyring,
does not have properly formatted or sorted output.
There are a number of bugs when specifying filenames end-
ing in digits; the general result is that the default out-
put filename is not what might be expected (i.e., pgpe -sa
foo1 results in an output suggestion of foo1.asc.1 instead
PGP JULY 1997 (v5.0) 4
PGP(5.0) User Manual PGP(5.0)
of foo1.asc, as expected). It is conjectured that the
user interface is becoming confused and invoking the rules
used to generate multi-part ASCII armor filenames.
Configuration option TZfix doesn't allow specifying non-
mainstream values, such as -420 or 30.
SEE ALSO
pgpe(1), pgpv(1), pgps(1), pgpk(1), pgp.cfg(5), pgp-inte-
gration(7), http://www.pgp.com (US versions) and
http://www.pgpi.com (International versions)
PGP JULY 1997 (v5.0) 5