Greetings, recently, I downloaded the latest freeware version of PGP,
that being version 6.5.1. There are some interesting aspects of this
new version of PGP which I felt others on this list might find
interesting.
#1 PGP 6.5.1 reincorporates a command-line interface!
#2 All of the pgp commands are now accessed via the 'pgp.exe' file and
not multiple '.exe' files as was the case in PGP 5.0I i.e. pgps, pgpe,
pgpk are a thing of the past...
#3 It is again possible to create detachable signature certificates,
this feature was removed in 5.0I for some reason.
#4 For those of you using 2.6.X, this newer version supports both RSA
and DH/DSS keys, the freeware version, however, will only allow for the
generation of DH/DSS keys, see notes below.
#5 In version 5.0I, there was introduced a feature which never totally
worked properly, at least not on a win98 machine, that being the
ability, from the command line, to both import and export keys to a
public key server. This now works fantastically well with the new
version.
Notes:
I have only been using this new version of PGP for a few days, so I will
undoubtedly find additional features which don't work as they should.
Nevertheless, all of the features which can be invoked with Yarn i.e.
the ability to sign/encrypt/decrypt a message work fantastically. The
only potential problem worth mentioning is that the freeware version of
the new PGP does *not* support the generation of RSA keys. RSA keys
can, however, be added to public/secret keyrings. If you have a
previously-generated RSA keypair, it can be used with the new version,
the limitation exists purely where generating a new keypair is concerned.
My recommendation would be, therefore, to keep an older copy of PGP on
the machine somewhere, so that a RSA keypair can be generated if
required. Of course, the other too alternatives would be to:
#1 Go to the newer DH/DSS standard about which there exists some
controversy;
#2 Don't be as cheap as I am and purchase the commercial PGP
version, to my knowledge, generation of RSA keypairs is supported in the
commercial version.
I hope this article is of use to someone out there, if there are any
questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Also, if anyone out there is
trying to get the older pgp 50I working with Yarn, I have a set of batch
files which might be of some use.
Enjoy,
Steve
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.1
iQEVAwUBN/TY880Pqwc0KZlBAQEu2wgA0/+9phbiZO1EnfbXx4jHXif5bEASlHS1
LTwcKDk1IXFQY662z2iXkGXGWCANKH4OoZn03x00LE7TtpNxz7vSn9nJ4HhU9AiG
Wf29yV/ITamNE3nKqyuJYy875uR4A8U1z4daVEsd/zggGRzs+KkExSpSTnb4wkCW
WgSCN/BCvh2ymRZO0iLhsjjKVFcRsmZyx7dlWRO8CNcgOXZWRQF8CIx+bt2PoNDU
z5XA9z2aZzpG3j66xmg8a5/9+AILo292h7mvrYcXKqs2xxPrlX1vfmtBecrJdgn/
KTcQ/1qcHjKVSmyALmweS2HS3wwlRi112FNmSDAQ9NbTZBIJsGss6g==
=58G4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----