Mail from 2014-08-12

Hello!

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG-2
release: Version 2.0.26. This is a maintenance release to fix a
regression introduced with the 2.0.24 release.

The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is the most commonly used tool for OpenPGP
mail and data encryption. It can be used to encrypt data, create
digital signatures, help authenticating using Secure Shell and to
provide a framework for public key cryptography. It includes an
advanced key management facility and is compliant with the OpenPGP and
S/MIME standards.

GnuPG-2 has a different architecture than GnuPG-1 (e.g. 1.4.18) 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 keep maintaining GnuPG-1 versions because
they are useful on very old platforms 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, VMS, and Mac OS X.

What's New in 2.0.26

• gpg: Fix a regression in 2.0.24 if a subkey id is given to --recv-keys et al.

• gpg: Cap attribute packets at 16MB.

• gpgsm: Auto-create the ".gnupg" home directory in the same way gpg does.

• scdaemon: Allow for certificates > 1024 when using PC/SC.

Getting the Software

Please follow the instructions found at https://www.gnupg.org/download/
or read on:

GnuPG 2.0.26 may be downloaded from one of the GnuPG mirror sites or
direct from ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gnupg/ . The list of mirrors
can be found at https://www.gnupg.org/mirrors.html . Note that GnuPG
is not available at ftp.gnu.org.

On ftp.gnupg.org and on its mirrors you should find the following new
files in the gnupg/ directory:

• The GnuPG-2 source code compressed using BZIP2 and its OpenPGP signature:

  gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2 (4203k) gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2.sig

• A patch file to upgrade a 2.0.25 GnuPG source tree. This patch does not include updates of the language files.

  gnupg-2.0.25-2.0.26.diff.bz2 (10k)

Note, that we don't distribute gzip compressed tarballs for GnuPG-2.
A Windows version will soon be released at https://gpg4win.org .

Checking the Integrity

In order to check that the version of GnuPG which you are going to
install is an original and unmodified one, you can do it in one of
the following ways:

• If you already have a trusted version of GnuPG installed, you can simply check the supplied signature. For example to check the signature of the file gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2 you would use this command:

  gpg --verify gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2.sig

  This checks whether the signature file matches the source file. You should see a message indicating that the signature is good and made by that signing key. Make sure that you have the right key, either by checking the fingerprint of that key with other sources or by checking that the key has been signed by a trustworthy other key. Note, that you can retrieve the signing key using the command

  finger wk ,at' g10code.com

  or using a keyserver like

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 4F25E3B6

  The distribution key 4F25E3B6 is signed by the well known key 1E42B367.

  NEVER USE A GNUPG VERSION YOU JUST DOWNLOADED TO CHECK THE INTEGRITY OF THE SOURCE - USE AN EXISTING GNUPG INSTALLATION!

• If you are not able to use an old version of GnuPG, you have to verify the SHA-1 checksum. Assuming you downloaded the file gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2, you would run the sha1sum command like this:

  sha1sum gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2

  and check that the output matches the first line from the following list:

3ff5b38152c919724fd09cf2f17df704272ba192 gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2
9e5727384b163722b05a8bb5f0e4c7987a5cbbb6 gnupg-2.0.25-2.0.26.diff.bz2