Gpg4win is an email and file encryption package for most versions of Microsoft Windows and

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as c ...

, which utilises the

GnuPG GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a free-software replacement for Symantec's PGP cryptographic software suite. The software is compliant with RFC 4880, the IETF standards-track specification of OpenPGP. Modern versions of PGP are interope ...

framework for

symmetric Symmetry (from grc, συμμετρία "agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement") in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, "symmetry" has a more precise definit ...

and

public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic a ...

, such as data encryption,

digital signature A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...

s, hash calculations etc.

History of Gpg4win

The original creation of Gpg4win was initiated in 2005 and funded by Germany's

Federal Office for Information Security The Federal Office for Information Security (german: Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, abbreviated as BSI) is the German upper-level federal agency in charge of managing computer and communication security for the German go ...

(BSI) in 2006, resulting in the release of Gpg4win 1.0.0 on 6 April 2006; however Gpg4win and all included tools are

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

, and it is typically the non-proprietary option for privacy recommended to Windows users. As Gpg4win v1 was a much overhauled derivate of GnuPP, both were using GnuPG v1 for cryptographic operations and thus only supported

OpenPGP Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partiti ...

as cryptography standard. Hence in 2007 the development of a fundamentally enhanced version was started, also with support from the German BSI (

); this effort culminated in the release of Gpg4win 2.0.0 on 7 August 2009 after a protracted beta testing phase, which was based on GnuPG 2.0, included S/MIME support, Kleopatra as a new certificate manager, the

Explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...

plug-in GpgEX for cryptography operations on files, basic support of

smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

s, a full set of German dialogue texts in addition to the English ones, new manuals in English and German, plus many other enhancements. In contrast to Gpg4win v2, which focused on new features and software components, the development of Gpg4win v3 focused on usability, plus consolidation of code and features: This resulted in the release of Gpg4win 3.0.0 on 19 September 2017 with proper support for

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys compared to non-EC cryptography (based on plain Galois fields) to provide e ...

by utilising GnuPG 2.2 (instead of 2.0), broadened, stabilised and enhanced smart card support, a fundamentally overhauled

Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft * Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...

plug-in GpgOL for Outlook 2010 and newer, support of 64-bit versions of Outlook 2010 and newer, supporting dialogues in all languages which KDE supports etc. It is also distributed as GnuPG VS-Desktop with commercial support and approval for handling NATO RESTRICTED, RESTREINT UE/EU RESTRICTED and German VS-NfD documents, which in turn has become the major source of revenue for maintaining and further developing the GnuPG framework and Gpg4win. Gpg4win 4.0.0, released on 21 December 2021, switched to using GnuPG 2.3 (from 2.2) and continued to refine and enhance the feature set of Gpg4win v3.

Contents of Gpg4win Installer

: the core cryptography framework * Certificate managers ** Kleopatra: certificate manager for OpenPGP and X.509 ** GPA: an alternative certificate manager (

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any ...

) for OpenPGP and X.509 * Plug-ins for email and file cryptography ** GpgOL: a plug-in for

to provide email encryption and signing ** GpgEX: a plug-in for the

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

to provide file encryption, signing and hash calculations * ''Gpg4win Compendium'': an introduction to encryption (OpenPGP and X.509) and user manual for Gpg4win

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.gpg4win.org/ Free security software Cryptographic software OpenPGP Email Privacy of telecommunications Windows security software

History of Gpg4win

Contents of Gpg4win Installer

See also

References

External links