Software Update: GnuPG 2.0.21

GnuPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard and is also often abbreviated to GPG. This is a collection of tools for securing communication flows and data. It can be used to encrypt data and create digital signatures, and to provide a framework for public key cryptography. It supports both OpenPGP and S/MIME standards. For more information, please refer to this page. The developers released GnuPG 2.0.21 a few days ago with the following announcement:

Hello!

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG-2 release: Version 2.0.21.

GnuPG-2 has a different architecture than GnuPG-1 (eg 1.4.14) in that it splits up functionality into several modules. However, both versions may be installed alongside without any conflict. In fact, the gpg version from GnuPG-1 is able to make use of the gpg-agent as included in GnuPG-2 and allows for seamless passphrase caching. The advantage of GnuPG-1 is its smaller size and the lack of dependency on other modules at run and build time. We will keep maintaining GnuPG-1 versions because they are very useful for small systems and for server based applications requiring only OpenPGP support.

GnuPG is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3+). GnuPG-2 works best on GNU/Linux and *BSD systems but is also available for other Unices, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

What’s New in 2.0.21

• gpg-agent: By default the users are now asked via the Pinentry whether they trust an X.509 root key. To prohibit interactive marking of such keys, the new option –no-allow-mark-trusted may be used.
• gpg-agent: The command KEYINFO has options to add info from sshcontrol.
• The included ssh agent does now support ECDSA keys.
• The new option –enable-putty-support allows gpg-agent to act on Windows as a Pageant replacement with full smartcard support.
• Support installation as portable application under Windows.