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

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...

, which utilises the

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

framework for

symmetric Symmetry () in everyday life refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, the term has a more precise definition and is usually used to refer to an object that is invariant under some transformations ...

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 alg ...

, such as data encryption, digital signatures, hash calculations etc.

History of Gpg4win

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

Federal Office for Information Security The Federal Office for Information Security (, abbreviated as BSI) is the German upper-level federal agency in charge of managing computer and communication security for the German government. Its areas of expertise and responsibility includ ...

(BSI) in 2005, 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 software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

, 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 partit ...

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 S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public-key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly . It was originally developed by ...

support, Kleopatra as a new certificate manager, the

Explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

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

smart card A smart card (SC), chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card), is a card used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an Embedded system, embedded integrated circuit (IC) chip. Many smart ...

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) 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, also referred to as ''the classic Outlook'' an e-mail client and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook for Windows, also referred to as ''the ...

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 (394 packages ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popu ...

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

to provide

email encryption Email encryption is encryption of email messages to protect the content from being read by entities other than the intended recipients. Email encryption may also include authentication. Email is prone to the disclosure of information. Although man ...

and signing ** GpgEX: a plug-in for the

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...

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