The 640 MEG Shareware Studio 2/The 640 Meg Shareware Studio CD-ROM Volume II (Data Express)(1993).ISO/clang/pgp20src.zip/PGPDOC2.TXT

Text File | 1992-09-03 | 86KB | 1,840 lines

             Phil's Pretty Good Software
                   Presents

                 ===
                 PGP
                 ===

             Pretty Good Privacy
         Public Key Encryption for the Masses


              -------------------------
               PGP User's Guide
              Volume II: Special Topics
              -------------------------
             by Philip Zimmermann
               Revised 1 Sep 92


              PGP Version 2.0 - 1 Sep 92
             Software Written by
              Philip Zimmermann
                 with
       Hal Finney, Branko Lankester, and Peter Gutmann




Synopsis:  PGP uses public-key encryption to protect E-mail and data
files.  Communicate securely with people you've never met, with no
secure channels needed for prior exchange of keys.  PGP is well
featured and fast, with sophisticated key management, digital
signatures, data compression, and good ergonomic design.


Software and documentation (c) Copyright 1990-1992 Philip Zimmermann.
For information on PGP licensing, distribution, copyrights, patents,
trademarks, liability limitations, and export controls, see the
"Legal Issues" section.


Contents
========

Quick Overview
Special Topics
  Separating Signatures from Messages
  Decrypting the Message and Leaving the Signature on it
  Sending ASCII Text Files Across Different Machine Environments
  Leaving No Traces of Plaintext on the Disk
  Displaying Decrypted Plaintext on Your Screen
  Making a Message For Her Eyes Only
  Preserving the Original Plaintext Filename
  Editing Your User ID or Pass Phrase
  Editing the Trust Parameters for a Public Key
  Checking If Everything is OK on Your Public Key Ring
  Using PGP as a Unix-style Filter
  PGP Returns Exit Status to the Shell
  Environmental Variable for Pass Phrase
  Setting Configuration Parameters: CONFIG.TXT
    TMP - Directory Pathname for Temporary Files
    LANGUAGE - Foreign Language Selector
    MYNAME - Default User ID for Making Signatures
    TEXTMODE - Assuming Plaintext is a Text File
    CHARSET - Specifies Local Character Set for Text Files
    ARMOR - Enable ASCII Armor Output
    ARMORLINES - Size of ASCII Armor Multipart Files
    KEEPBINARY - Keep Binary Ciphertext Files After Decrypting
    VERBOSE - Enable Verbose Mode
    COMPRESS - Enable Compression
    BAKRING - Filename for Backup Secret Keyring
    COMPLETES_NEEDED - Number of Completely Trusted Introducers Needed
    MARGINALS_NEEDED - Number of Marginally Trusted Introducers Needed
    CERT_DEPTH - How Deep May Introducers Be Nested
    PAGER - Selects Shell Command to Display Plaintext Output
    SHOWPASS - Echo Pass Phrase to User
    TZFIX - Timezone Adjustment
  Protecting Against Bogus Timestamps
  A Peek Under the Hood
    Random Numbers
    PGP's Conventional Encryption Algorithm
    Data Compression
    Message Digests and Digital Signatures
  Compatibility with Previous Versions of PGP
Vulnerabilities
  Compromised Pass Phrase and Secret Key
  Public Key Tampering
  "Not Quite Deleted" Files
  Viruses and Trojan Horses
  Physical Security Breach
  Tempest Attacks
  Exposure on Multi-user Systems
  Traffic Analysis
  Cryptanalysis
Legal Issues
  Trademarks, Copyrights, and Warranties
  Patent Rights on the Algorithms
  Licensing and Distribution
  Export Controls
Recommended Readings
To Contact the Author


Quick Overview
=============

Pretty Good(tm) Privacy (PGP), from Phil's Pretty Good Software, is a
high security cryptographic software application for MSDOS, Unix,
VAX/VMS, and other computers.  PGP combines the convenience of the
Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key cryptosystem with the speed of
conventional cryptography, message digests for digital signatures,
data compression before encryption, good ergonomic design, and
sophisticated key management.

This volume II of the PGP User's Guide covers advanced topics about
PGP that were not covered in the "PGP User's Guide, Volume I:
Essential Topics".  You should first read the Essential Topics
volume, or this manual won't make much sense to you.  Reading this
Special Topics volume is optional.



Special Topics
===============

Separating Signatures from Messages
-----------------------------------

Normally, signature certificates are physically attached to the text
they sign.  This makes it convenient in simple cases to check
signatures.  It is desirable in some circumstances to have signature
certificates stored separately from the messages they sign.  It is
possible to generate signature certificates that are detached from
the text they sign.  To do this, combine the 'b' (break) option with
the 's' (sign) option.  For example:

    pgp -sb letter.txt

This example produces an isolated signature certificate in a file
called "letter.sig".  The contents of letter.txt are not appended to
the signature certificate.

After creating the signature certificate file (letter.sig in the
above example), send it along with the original text file to the
recipient.  The recipient must have both files to check the signature
integrity.  When the recipient attempts to process the signature
file, PGP notices that there is no text in the same file with the
signature and prompts the user for the filename of the text. Only
then can PGP properly check the signature integrity.  If the
recipient knows in advance that the signature is detached from the
text file, she can specify both filenames on the command line:

    pgp letter.sig letter.txt
or: pgp letter letter.txt

PGP will not have to prompt for the text file name in this case.

A detached signature certificate is useful if you want to keep the
signature certificate in a separate certificate log.  A detached
signature of an executable program is also useful for detecting a
subsequent virus infection.  It is also useful if more than one party
must sign a document such as a legal contract, without nesting
signatures.  Each person's signature is independent.

If you receive a ciphertext file that has the signature certificate
glued to the message, you can still pry the signature certificate
away from the message during the decryption.  You can do this with
the -b option during decrypt, like so:

    pgp -b letter

This decrypts the letter.pgp file and if there is a signature in it,
PGP checks the signature and detaches it from the rest of the
message, storing it in the file letter.sig.


Decrypting the Message and Leaving the Signature on it
------------------------------------------------------

Usually, you want PGP to completely unravel a ciphertext file,
decrypting it and checking the nested signature if there is one,
peeling away the layers until you are left with only the original
plaintext file.

But sometimes you want to decrypt an encrypted file, and leave the
inner signature still attached, so that you are left with a decrypted
signed message.  This may be useful if you want to send a copy of a
signed document to a third party, perhaps re-enciphering it.  For
example, suppose you get a message signed by Charlie, encrypted to
you.  You want to decrypt it, and, leaving Charlie's signature on it,
you want to send it to Alice, perhaps re-enciphering it with Alice's
public key.  No problem.  PGP can handle that.

To simply decrypt a message and leave the signature on it intact,
type:

    pgp -d letter

This decrypts letter.pgp, and if there is an inner signature, it is
left intact with the decrypted plaintext in the output file.

Now you can archive it, or maybe re-encrypt it and send it to someone
else.



Sending ASCII Text Files Across Different Machine Environments
--------------------------------------------------------------

You may use PGP to encrypt any kind of plaintext file, binary 8-bit
data or ASCII text.  Probably the most common usage of PGP will be for
E-mail, when the plaintext is ASCII text.

ASCII text is sometimes represented differently on different
machines.  For example, on an MSDOS system, all lines of ASCII text
are terminated with a carriage return followed by a linefeed.  On a
Unix system, all lines end with just a linefeed.  On a Macintosh, all
lines end with just a carriage return.  This is a sad fact of life.

Normal unencrypted ASCII text messages are often automatically
translated to some common "canonical" form when they are transmitted
from one machine to another.  Canonical text has a carriage return
and a linefeed at the end of each line of text.  For example, the
popular KERMIT communication protocol can convert text to canonical
form when transmitting it to another system.  This gets converted
back to local text line terminators by the receiving KERMIT.  This
makes it easy to share text files across different systems.

But encrypted text cannot be automatically converted by a
communication protocol, because the plaintext is hidden by
encipherment.  To remedy this inconvenience, PGP lets you specify
that the plaintext should be treated as ASCII text (not binary data)
and should be converted to canonical text form before it gets
encrypted.  At the receiving end, the decrypted plaintext is
automatically converted back to whatever text form is appropriate for
the local environment.

To make PGP assume the plaintext is text that should be converted to
canonical text before encryption, just add the "t" option when
encrypting or signing a message, like so:

   pgp -et message.txt her_userid

This mode is automatically turned off if PGP detects that the
plaintext file contains what it thinks is non-text binary data.

For PGP users that use non-English 8-bit character sets, when PGP
converts text to canonical form, it may convert data from the local
character set into the LATIN1 (ISO 8859-1 Latin Alphabet 1) character
set, depending on the setting of the CHARSET parameter in the PGP
configuration file.  LATIN1 is a superset of ASCII, with extra
characters added for many European languages.



Leaving No Traces of Plaintext on the Disk
------------------------------------------

After PGP makes a ciphertext file for you, you can have PGP
automatically overwrite the plaintext file and delete it, leaving no
trace of plaintext on the disk so that no one can recover it later
using a disk block scanning utility.  This is useful if the plaintext
file contains sensitive information that you don't want to keep
around.

To wipe out the plaintext file after producing the ciphertext file,
just add the "w" (wipe) option when encrypting or signing a message,
like so:

    pgp -esw message.txt her_userid

This example creates the ciphertext file "message.pgp", and the
plaintext file "message.txt" is destroyed beyond recovery.

Obviously, you should be careful with this option.  Also note that
this will not wipe out any fragments of plaintext that your word
processor might have created on the disk while you were editing the
message before running PGP.  Most word processors create backup
files, scratch files, or both.  Also, it overwrites the file only
once, which is enough to thwart conventional disk recovery efforts,
but not enough to withstand a determined and sophisticated effort to
recover the faint magnetic traces of the data using special disk
recovery hardware.



Displaying Decrypted Plaintext on Your Screen
---------------------------------------------

To view the decrypted plaintext output on your screen (like the
Unix-style "more" command), without writing it to a file, use the -m
(more) option while decrypting:

     pgp -m ciphertextfile

This displays the decrypted plaintext display on your screen one
screenful at a time.



Making a Message For Her Eyes Only
----------------------------------

To specify that the recipient's decrypted plaintext will be shown
ONLY on her screen and cannot be saved to disk, add the -m option:

     pgp -sem message.txt her_userid

Later, when the recipient decrypts the ciphertext with her secret key
and pass phrase, the plaintext will be displayed on her screen but
will not be saved to disk.  The text will be displayed as it would if
she used the Unix "more" command, one screenful at a time.  If she
wants to read the message again, she will have to decrypt the
ciphertext again.

This feature is the safest way for you to prevent your sensitive
message from being inadvertently left on the recipient's disk.  This
feature was added at the request of a user who wanted to send
intimate messages to his lover, but was afraid she might accidentally
leave the decrypted messages on her husband's computer.



Preserving the Original Plaintext Filename
------------------------------------------

Normally, PGP names the decrypted plaintext output file with a name
similar to the input ciphertext filename, but dropping the
extension.  Or, you can override that convention by specifying an
output plaintext filename on the command line with the -o option.
For most E-mail, this is a reasonable way to name the plaintext file,
because you get to decide its name when you decipher it, and your
typical E-mail messages often come from useless original plaintext
filenames like "to_phil.txt".

But when PGP encrypts a plaintext file, it always saves the original
filename and attaches it to the plaintext before it compresses and
encrypts the plaintext.  Normally, this hidden original filename is
discarded by PGP when it decrypts, but you can tell PGP you want to
preserve the original plaintext filename and use it as the name of
the decrypted plaintext output file.  This is useful if PGP is used
to on files whose names are important to preserve.

To recover the original plaintext filename while decrypting, add
the -p option, like so:

     pgp -p ciphertextfile

I usually don't use this option, because if I did, about half of my
incoming E-mail would decrypt to the same plaintext filenames of
"to_phil.txt" or "prz.txt".



Editing Your User ID or Pass Phrase
-----------------------------------

Sometimes you may need to change your pass phrase, perhaps because
someone looked over your shoulder while you typed it in.

Or you may need to change your user ID, because you got married and
changed your name, or maybe you changed your E-mail address.  Or
maybe you want to add a second or third user ID to your key, because
you may be known by more than one name or E-mail address or job
title.  PGP lets you attach more than one user ID to your key, any
one of which may be used to look up your key on the key ring.

To edit your userid or pass phrase for your secret key:

     pgp -ke userid [keyring]

PGP prompts you for a new user ID or a new pass phrase.



Editing the Trust Parameters for a Public Key
---------------------------------------------

Sometimes you need to alter the trust parameters for a public key on
your public key ring.  For a discussion on what these trust
parameters mean, see the section "How Does PGP Keep Track of Which
Keys are Valid?" in the Essential Topics volume of the PGP User's
Guide.

To edit the trust parameters for a public key:

     pgp -ke userid [keyring]



Checking If Everything is OK on Your Public Key Ring
----------------------------------------------------

Normally, PGP automatically checks any new keys or signatures on your
public key ring and updates all the trust parameters and validity
scores.  In theory, it keeps all the key validity status information
up to date as material is added to or deleted from your public key
ring.  But perhaps you may want to explicitly force PGP to perform a
comprehensive analysis of your public key ring, checking all the
certifying signatures, checking the trust parameters, updating all
the validity scores, and checking your own ultimately-trusted key
against a backup copy on a write-protected floppy disk.  It may be a
good idea to do this hygienic maintenance periodically to make sure
nothing is wrong with your public key ring.  To force PGP to perform
a full analysis of your public key ring, use the -kc (key ring check)
command:

     pgp -kc

You can also make PGP check all the signatures for just a single
selected public key by:

     pgp -kc userid [keyring]

For further information on how the backup copy of your own key is
checked, see the description of the BAKRING parameter in the
configuration file section of this manual.



Using PGP as a Unix-style Filter
--------------------------------

Unix fans are accustomed to using Unix "pipes" to make two
applications work together.  The output of one application can be
directly fed through a pipe to be read as input to another
application.  For this to work, the applications must be capable of
reading the raw material from "standard input" and writing the
finished output to "standard output".  PGP can operate in this mode.
If you don't understand what this means, then you probably don't need
this feature.

To use a Unix-style filter mode, reading from standard input and
writing to standard output, add the -f option, like so:

     pgp -feast her_userid <inputfile >outputfile

This feature makes it easier to make PGP work with electronic mail
applications.

When using PGP in filter mode to decrypt a ciphertext file, you may
find it useful to use the PGPPASS environmental variable to hold the
pass phrase, so that you won't be prompted for it.  The PGPPASS
feature is explained below.



PGP Returns Exit Status to the Shell
------------------------------------

To facilitate running PGP in "batch" mode, such as from an MSDOS
".bat" file or from a Unix shell script, PGP returns an error exit
status to the shell.  An exit status code of zero means normal exit,
while a nonzero exit status indicates some kind of error occurred.
Different error exit conditions return different exit status codes to
the shell.



Environmental Variable for Pass Phrase
--------------------------------------

Normally, PGP prompts the user to type a pass phrase whenever PGP
needs a pass phrase to unlock a secret key.  But it is possible to
store the pass phrase in an environmental variable from your
operating system's command shell.  The environmental variable PGPPASS
can be used to hold the pass phrase that PGP will attempt to use
first.  If the pass phrase stored in PGPPASS is incorrect, PGP
recovers by prompting the user for the correct pass phrase.

For example, on MSDOS, the shell command:

    SET PGPPASS=zaphod beeblebrox for president

would eliminate the prompt for the pass phrase if the pass phrase
were indeed "zaphod beeblebrox for president".

This dangerous feature makes your life more convenient if you have to
regularly deal with a large number of incoming messages addressed to
your secret key, by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly type
in your pass phrase every time you run PGP.

I added this feature because of popular demand.  However, this is a
somewhat dangerous feature, because it keeps your precious pass
phrase stored somewhere other than just in your brain.  Even worse,
if you are particularly reckless, it may even be stored on a disk on
the same computer as your secret key.  It would be particularly
dangerous and stupid if you were to install this command in a batch
or script file, such as the MSDOS AUTOEXEC.BAT file.  Someone could
come along on your lunch hour and steal both your secret key ring and
the file containing your pass phrase.

I can't emphasize the importance of this risk enough.  If you are
contemplating using this feature, be sure to read the sections
"Exposure on Multi-user Systems" and "How to Protect Secret Keys from
Disclosure" in this volume and in the Essential Topics volume of the
PGP User's Guide.

If you must use this feature, the safest way to do it would be to
just manually type in the shell command to set PGPPASS every time you
boot your machine to start using PGP, and then erase it or turn off
your machine when you are done.  And you should definitely never do
it in an environment where someone else may have access to your
machine.  Someone could come along and simply ask your computer to
display the contents of PGPPASS.



Setting Configuration Parameters: CONFIG.TXT
============================================

PGP has a number of user-settable parameters that can be defined in a
special configuration text file called "config.txt", in the directory
pointed to by the shell environmental variable PGPPATH.  Having a
configuration file enables the user to define various flags and
parameters for PGP without the burden of having to always define
these parameters in the PGP command line.

Configuration parameters may be assigned integer values, character
string values, or on/off values, depending on what kind of
configuration parameter it is.  A sample configuration file is
provided with PGP, so you can see some examples.

In the configuration file, blank lines are ignored, as is anything
following the '#' comment character.  Keywords are not
case-sensitive.

Here is a short sample fragment of a typical configuration file:

   # TMP is the directory for PGP scratch files, such as a RAM disk.
   TMP = "e:\"    # Can be overridden by environment variable TMP.
   Armor = on     # Use -a flag for ASCII armor whenever applicable.
   # CERT_DEPTH is how deeply introducers may introduce introducers.
   cert_depth = 3

If some configuration parameters are not defined in the configuration
file, or if there is no configuration file, or if PGP can't find the
configuration file, the values for the configuration parameters
default to some reasonable value.

The following is a summary of the various parameters than may be
defined in the configuration file.


TMP - Directory Pathname for Temporary Files
--------------------------------------------

Default setting:  TMP = ""

The configuration parameter TMP specifies what directory to use for
PGP's temporary scratch files.  The best place to put them is on a
RAM disk, if you have one.  That speeds things up quite a bit, and
increases security somewhat.  If TMP is undefined, the temporary
files go in the current directory.  If the shell environmental
variable TMP is defined, PGP instead uses that to specify where the
temporary files should go.


LANGUAGE - Foreign Language Selector
------------------------------------

Default setting:  LANGUAGE = "en"

PGP displays various prompts, warning messages, and advisories to the
user on the screen.  For example, messages such as "File not found.",
or "Please enter your pass phrase:".  These messages are normally in
English.  But it is possible to get PGP to display its messages to
the user in other languages, without having to modify the PGP
executable program.

A number of people in various countries have translated all of PGP's
display messages, warnings, and prompts into their native languages.
These hundreds of translated message strings have been placed in a
special text file called "language.txt", distributed with the PGP
release.  The messages are stored in this file in English, Spanish,
Dutch, German, French, Italian, Russian, Latvian, and Lithuanian.
Other languages may be added later.

The configuration parameter LANGUAGE specifies what language to
display these messages in.  LANGUAGE may be set to "en" for English,
"es" for Spanish, "de" for German, "nl" for Dutch, "fr" for French,
"it" for Italian, "ru" for Russian, "lt3" for Lithuanian, "lv" for
Latvian, "esp" for Esperanto.  For example, if this line appeared in
the configuration file:

   LANGUAGE = "fr"

PGP would select French as the language for its display messages.
The default setting is English.

When PGP needs to display a message to the user, it looks in the
"language.txt" file for the equivalent message string in the selected
foreign language and displays that translated message to the user.
If PGP can't find the language string file, or if the selected
language is not in the file, or if that one phrase is not translated
into the selected language in the file, or if that phrase is missing
entirely from the file, PGP displays the message in English.


MYNAME - Default User ID for Making Signatures
----------------------------------------------

Default setting:  MYNAME = ""

The configuration parameter MYNAME specifies the default user ID to
use to select the secret key for making signatures.  If MYNAME is not
defined, the most recent secret key you installed on your secret key
ring will be used.  The user may also override this setting by
specifying a user ID on the PGP command line with the -u option.


TEXTMODE - Assuming Plaintext is a Text File
--------------------------------------------

Default setting:  TEXTMODE = off

The configuration parameter TEXTMODE is equivalent to the -t command
line option.  If enabled, it causes PGP to assume the plaintext is a
text file, not a binary file, and converts it to "canonical text"
before encrypting it.  Canonical text has a carriage return and a
linefeed at the end of each line of text.

This mode will be automatically turned off if PGP detects that the
plaintext file contains what it thinks is non-text binary data.

For further details, see the section "Sending ASCII Text Files Across
Different Machine Environments".


CHARSET - Specifies Local Character Set for Text Files
------------------------------------------------------

Default setting:  CHARSET = NOCONV

Because PGP must process messages in many non-English languages with
non-ASCII character sets, you may have a need to tell PGP what local
character set your machine uses.  This determines what character
conversions are performed when converting plaintext files to and from
canonical text format.  This is only a concern if you are in a
non-English non-ASCII environment.

The configuration parameter CHARSET selects the local character set.
The choices are NOCONV (no conversion), LATIN1 (ISO 8859-1 Latin
Alphabet 1), KOI8 (used by most Russian Unix systems), ALT-CODES
(used by Russian MSDOS systems), ASCII, and CP850 (used by most
western European languages on standard MSDOS PCs).

LATIN1 is the internal representation used by PGP for canonical text,
so if you select LATIN1, no conversion is done.  Note also that PGP
treats KOI8 as LATIN1, even though it is a completely different
character set (Russian), because trying to convert KOI8 to either
LATIN1 or CP850 would be futile anyway.  This means that setting
CHARSET to NOCONV, LATIN1, or KOI8 are all equivalent to PGP.

If you use MSDOS and expect to send or receive traffic in western
European languages, set CHARSET = "CP850".  This will make PGP
convert incoming canonical text messages from LATIN1 to CP850 after
decryption.  If you use the -t (textmode) option to convert to
canonical text, PGP will convert your CP850 text to LATIN1 before
encrypting it.

For further details, see the section "Sending ASCII Text Files Across
Different Machine Environments".


ARMOR - Enable ASCII Armor Output
---------------------------------

Default setting:  ARMOR = off

The configuration parameter ARMOR is equivalent to the -a command
line option.  If enabled, it causes PGP to emit ciphertext or keys in
ASCII Radix-64 format suitable for transporting through E-mail
channels.  Output files are named with the ".asc" extension.

If you tend to use PGP mostly for E-mail, it may be a good idea to
enable this parameter.

For further details, see the section "Sending Ciphertext Through
E-mail Channels: Radix-64 Format" in the Essential Topics volume.


ARMORLINES - Size of ASCII Armor Multipart Files
------------------------------------------------

Default setting:  ARMORLINES = 720

When PGP creates a very large ".asc" radix-64 file for sending
ciphertext or keys through the E-mail, it breaks the file up into
separate chunks small enough to send through Internet mail
utilities.  Normally, Internet mailers prohibit files larger than
about 50000 bytes, which means that if we restrict the number of
lines to about 720, we'll be well within the limit.  The file chunks
are named with suffixes ".as1", ".as2", ".as3", ...

The configuration parameter ARMORLINES specifies the maximum number
of lines to make each chunk in a multipart ".asc" file sequence.  If
you set it to zero, PGP will not break up the file into chunks.

For further details, see the section "Sending Ciphertext Through
E-mail Channels: Radix-64 Format" in the Essential Topics volume.


KEEPBINARY - Keep Binary Ciphertext Files After Decrypting
----------------------------------------------------------

Default setting:  KEEPBINARY = on

When PGP reads a ".asc" file, it recognizes that the file is in
radix-64 format and will convert it back to binary before processing
as it normally does, producing as a by-product a ".pgp" ciphertext
file in binary form.  After further processing to decrypt the ".pgp"
file, the final output file will be in normal plaintext form.

You may want to delete the binary ".pgp" intermediate file, or you
may want PGP to delete it for you automatically.  You can still rerun
PGP on the original ".asc" file.

The configuration parameter KEEPBINARY enables or disables keeping
the intermediate ".pgp" file during decryption.

For further details, see the section "Sending Ciphertext Through
E-mail Channels: Radix-64 Format" in the Essential Topics volume.


VERBOSE - Enable Verbose Mode
-----------------------------

Default setting:  VERBOSE = off

The configuration parameter VERBOSE enables "verbose" diagnostic
messages during PGP's operation, which is mainly useful for debugging
PGP.  Otherwise, there is not much use for it.


COMPRESS - Enable Compression
-----------------------------

Default setting:  COMPRESS = on

The configuration parameter COMPRESS enables or disables data
compression before encryption.  It is used mainly for debugging PGP.
Normally, PGP attempts to compress the plaintext before it encrypts
it.  Generally, you should leave this alone and let PGP attempt to
compress the plaintext.


COMPLETES_NEEDED - Number of Completely Trusted Introducers Needed
------------------------------------------------------------------

Default setting:  COMPLETES_NEEDED = 1

The configuration parameter COMPLETES_NEEDED specifies the minimum
number of completely trusted introducers required to fully certify a
public key on your public key ring.  This gives you a way of tuning
PGP's skepticism.

For further details, see the section "How Does PGP Keep Track of
Which Keys are Valid?" in the Essential Topics volume.


MARGINALS_NEEDED - Number of Marginally Trusted Introducers Needed
------------------------------------------------------------------

Default setting:  MARGINALS_NEEDED = 2

The configuration parameter MARGINALS_NEEDED specifies the minimum
number of marginally trusted introducers required to fully certify a
public key on your public key ring.  This gives you a way of tuning
PGP's skepticism.

For further details, see the section "How Does PGP Keep Track of
Which Keys are Valid?" in the Essential Topics volume.


CERT_DEPTH - How Deep May Introducers Be Nested
-----------------------------------------------

Default setting:  CERT_DEPTH = 4

The configuration parameter CERT_DEPTH specifies how many levels deep
you may nest introducers to certify other introducers to certify
public keys on your public key ring.  For example, If CERT_DEPTH is
set to 1, there may only be one layer of introducers below your own
ultimately-trusted key.  If that were the case, you would be required
to directly certify the public keys of all trusted introducers on
your key ring.  If you set CERT_DEPTH to 0, you could have no
introducers at all, and you would have to directly certify each and
every key on your public key ring in order to use it.  The minimum
CERT_DEPTH is 0, the maximum is 8.

For further details, see the section "How Does PGP Keep Track of
Which Keys are Valid?" in the Essential Topics volume.


BAKRING - Filename for Backup Secret Keyring
--------------------------------------------

Default setting:  BAKRING = ""

All of the key certification that PGP does on your public key ring
ultimately depends on your own ultimately-trusted public key (or
keys).  To detect any tampering of your public key ring, PGP must
check that your own key has not been tampered with.  To do this, PGP
must compare your public key against a backup copy of your secret key
on some tamper-resistant media, such as a write-protected floppy
disk.  A secret key contains all the information that your public key
has, plus some secret components.  This means PGP can check your
public key against a backup copy of your secret key.

The configuration parameter BAKRING specifies what pathname to use
for PGP's trusted backup copy of your secret key ring.  On MSDOS, you
could set it to "a:\secring.pgp" to point it at a write-protected
backup copy of your secret key ring on your floppy drive.  This check
is performed only when you execute the PGP -kc option to check your
whole public key ring.

If BAKRING is not defined, PGP will not check your own key against
any backup copy.

For further details, see the sections "How to Protect Public Keys
from Tampering" and "How Does PGP Keep Track of Which Keys are
Valid?" in the Essential Topics volume.


PAGER - Selects Shell Command to Display Plaintext Output
---------------------------------------------------------

Default setting:  PAGER = ""

PGP lets you view the decrypted plaintext output on your screen (like
the Unix-style "more" command), without writing it to a file, if you
use the -m (more) option while decrypting.  This displays the
decrypted plaintext display on your screen one screenful at a time.

If you prefer to use a fancier page display utility, rather than
PGP's built-in one, you can specify the name of a shell command that
PGP will invoke to display your plaintext output file.  The
configuration parameter PAGER specifies the shell command to invoke
to display the file.  For example:

   PAGER = "more"

However, if the sender specified that this file is for your eyes
only, and may not be written to disk, PGP always uses its own
built-in display function.

For further details, see the section "Displaying Decrypted Plaintext
on Your Screen".


SHOWPASS - Echo Pass Phrase to User
-----------------------------------

Default setting:  SHOWPASS = off

Normally, PGP does not let you see your pass phrase as you type it
in.  This makes it harder for someone to look over your shoulder
while you type and learn your pass phrase.  But some typing-impaired
people have problems typing their pass phrase without seeing what
they are typing, and they may be typing in the privacy of their own
homes.  So they asked if PGP can be configured to let them see what
they type when they type in their pass phrase.

The configuration parameter SHOWPASS enables PGP to echo your typing
during pass phrase entry.


TZFIX - Timezone Adjustment
---------------------------

Default setting:  TZFIX = 0

PGP provides timestamps for keys and signature certificates in
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which
means the same thing for our purposes.  When PGP asks the system for
the time of day, the system is supposed to provide it in GMT.

But sometimes, because of improperly configured MSDOS systems, the
system time is returned in US Pacific Standard Time time plus 8
hours.  Sounds weird, doesn't it?  Perhaps because of some sort of US
west-coast jingoism, MSDOS presumes local time is US Pacific time,
and pre-corrects Pacific time to GMT.  This adversely affects the
behavior of the internal MSDOS GMT time function that PGP calls.
However, if your MSDOS environmental variable TZ is already properly
defined for your timezone, this corrects the misconception MSDOS has
that the whole world lives on the US west coast.

The configuration parameter TZFIX specifies the number of hours to
add to the system time function to get GMT, for GMT timestamps on
keys and signatures.  If the MSDOS environmental variable TZ is
defined properly, you can leave TZFIX=0.  Unix systems usually
shouldn't need to worry about setting TZFIX at all.  But if you are
using some other obscure operating system that doesn't know about
GMT, you may have to use TZFIX to adjust the system time to GMT.

On MSDOS systems that do not have TZ defined in the environment, you
should make TZFIX=0 for California, -1 for Colorado, -2 for Chicago,
-3 for New York, -8 for London, -9 for Amsterdam.  In the summer,
TZFIX should be manually decremented from these values.  What a mess.

It would be much cleaner to set your MSDOS environmental variable TZ
in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and not use the TZFIX correction.  Then
MSDOS gives you good GMT timestamps, and will handle daylight savings
time adjustments for you.  Here are some sample lines to insert into
AUTOEXEC.BAT, depending on your time zone:

For Colorado:    SET TZ = MST7MDT
For Arizona:     SET TZ = MST7
   (Arizona never uses daylight savings time)
For Chicago:     SET TZ = CST6CDT
For New York:    SET TZ = EST5EDT
For London:      SET TZ = GMT0BST
For Amsterdam:   SET TZ = MET-1DST


Protecting Against Bogus Timestamps
===================================

A somewhat obscure vulnerability of PGP involves dishonest users
creating bogus timestamps on their own public key certificates and
signatures.  You can skip over this section if you are a casual user
and aren't deeply into obscure public key protocols.

There's nothing to stop a dishonest user from altering the date and
time setting of his own system's clock, and generating his own public
key certificates and signatures that appear to have been created at a
different time.  He can make it appear that he signed something
earlier or later than he actually did, or that his public/secret key
pair was created earlier or later.  This may have some legal or
financial benefit to him, for example by creating some kind of
loophole that might allow him to repudiate a signature.

A remedy for this could involve some trustworthy Certifying Authority
or notary that would create notarized signatures with a trustworthy
timestamp.  This might not necessarily require a centralized
authority.  Perhaps any trusted introducer or disinterested party
could serve this function, the same way real notary publics do now.
A public key certificate could be signed by the notary, and the
trusted timestamp in the notary's signature would have some legal
significance.  The notary could enter the signed certificate into a
special certificate log controlled by the notary.  Anyone can read
this log.

The notary could also sign other people's signatures, creating a
signature certificate of a signature certificate.  This would serve
as a witness to the signature the same way real notaries do now with
paper.  Again, the notary could enter the detached signature
certificate (without the actual whole document that was signed) into
a log controlled by the notary.  The notary's signature would have a
trusted timestamp, which might have greater credibility than the
timestamp in the original signature.  A signature becomes "legal" if
it is signed and logged by the notary.

This problem of certifying signatures with notaries and trusted
timestamps warrants further discussion.  This can of worms will not
be fully covered here now.  There is a good treatment of this topic
in Denning's 1983 article in IEEE Computer (see references).  There
is much more detail to be worked out in these various certifying
schemes.  This will develop further as PGP usage increases and other
public key products develop their own certifying schemes.


A Peek Under the Hood
=====================

Let's take a look at a few internal features of PGP.


Random Numbers
--------------

PGP uses a cryptographically strong pseudorandom number generator for
creating temporary conventional session keys.  The seed file for this
is called  "randseed.bin".  It too can be kept in whatever directory
is indicated by the PGPPATH environmental variable.  If this random
seed file does not exist, it is automatically created and seeded with
truly random numbers derived from timing your keystroke latencies.

This generator reseeds the disk file each time it is used by mixing
in new key material partially derived with the time of day and other
truly random sources.  It uses the conventional encryption algorithm
as an engine for the random number generator.  The seed file contains
both random seed material and random key material to key the
conventional encryption engine for the random generator.

If you feel uneasy about trusting any algorithmically derived random
number source however strong, keep in mind that you already trust the
strength of the same conventional cipher to protect your messages.
If it's strong enough for that, then it should be strong enough to
use as a source of random numbers for temporary session keys.  Note
that PGP still uses truly random numbers from physical sources
(mainly keyboard timings) to generate long-term public/secret key
pairs.



PGP's Conventional Encryption Algorithm
---------------------------------------

As described earlier, PGP "bootstraps" into a conventional single-key
encryption algorithm by using a public key algorithm to encipher the
conventional session key and then switching to fast conventional
cryptography.  So let's talk about this conventional encryption
algorithm.  It isn't the DES.

The Federal Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a good algorithm for
most commercial applications.  However, the Government does not trust
the DES to protect its own classified data.  Perhaps this is because
the DES key length is 56 bits, short enough for a brute force attack
with a special purpose machine built from massive numbers of DES
chips.  Also, Biham and Shamir have had some success recently on
attacking the full 16-round DES.

PGP does not use the DES as its conventional single-key algorithm to
encrypt messages.  Instead, PGP uses a different conventional
single-key block encryption algorithm, called IDEA(tm).  A future
version of PGP may support the DES as an option, if enough users
ask for it.  But I suspect IDEA is better than DES.

For the cryptographically curious, the IDEA cipher has a 64-bit block
size for the plaintext and the ciphertext.  It uses a key size of 128
bits.  It is based on the design concept of "mixing operations from
different algebraic groups".  It runs much faster in software than
the DES.  Like the DES, it can be used in cipher feedback (CFB) and
cipher block chaining (CBC) modes.  PGP uses it in 64-bit CFB mode.

The IPES/IDEA block cipher was developed at ETH in Zurich by James L.
Massey and Xuejia Lai, and published in 1990.  This is not a
"home-grown" algorithm.  Its designers have a distinguished
reputation in the cryptologic community.  Early published papers on
the algorithm called it IPES (Improved Proposed Encryption Standard),
but they later changed the name to IDEA (International Data
Encryption Algorithm).  So far, IDEA has resisted attack much better
than other ciphers such as FEAL, REDOC-II, LOKI, Snefru and Khafre.
And preliminary evidence suggests that IDEA may be more resistant
than the DES to Biham & Shamir's highly successful differential
cryptanalysis attack.  Biham and Shamir have been examining the IDEA
cipher for weaknesses.  Academic cryptanalyst groups in Belgium,
England, and Germany are also attempting to attack it, as well as the
military services from several European countries.  As this new
cipher continues to attract attack efforts from the most formidable
quarters of the cryptanalytic world, confidence in IDEA is growing
with the passage of time.

A famous hockey player once said, "I try to skate to where I think
the puck will be."  A lot of people are starting to feel that the
days are numbered for the DES.  I'm skating toward IDEA.

It is not ergonomically practical to use pure RSA with large keys to
encrypt and decrypt long messages.  Absolutely no one does it that way
in the real world.  But perhaps you are concerned that the whole
package is weakened if we use a hybrid public-key and conventional
scheme just to speed things up.  After all, a chain is only as strong
as its weakest link.  Many people less experienced in cryptography
mistakenly believe that RSA is intrinsically stronger than any
conventional cipher.  It's not.  RSA can be made weak by using weak
keys, and conventional ciphers can be made strong by choosing good
algorithms.  It's usually difficult to tell exactly how strong a good
conventional cipher is, without actually cracking it.  A really good
conventional cipher might possibly be harder to crack than even a
"military grade" RSA key.  The attraction of public key cryptography
is not because it is intrinsically stronger than a conventional
cipher-- its appeal is because it helps you manage keys more
conveniently.



Data Compression
----------------

PGP normally compresses the plaintext before encrypting it.  It's too
late to compress it after it has been encrypted; encrypted data is
incompressible.  Data compression saves modem transmission time and
disk space and more importantly strengthens cryptographic security.
Most cryptanalysis techniques exploit redundancies found in the
plaintext to crack the cipher.  Data compression reduces this
redundancy in the plaintext, thereby greatly enhancing resistance to
cryptanalysis.  It takes extra time to compress the plaintext, but
from a security point of view it seems worth it, at least in my
cautious opinion.

Files that are too short to compress or just don't compress well are
not compressed by PGP.

If you prefer, you can use PKZIP to compress the plaintext before
encrypting it.  PKZIP is a widely-available and effective MSDOS
shareware compression utility from PKWare, Inc.  Or you can use ZIP,
a PKZIP-compatible freeware compression utility on Unix and other
systems, available from Jean-Loup Gailly.  There is some advantage in
using PKZIP or ZIP in certain cases, because unlike PGP's built-in
compression algorithm, PKZIP and ZIP have the nice feature of
compressing multiple files into a single compressed file, which is
reconstituted again into separate files when decompressed.  PGP will
not try to compress a plaintext file that has already been
compressed.  After decrypting, the recipient can decompress the
plaintext with PKUNZIP.  If the decrypted plaintext is a PKZIP
compressed file, PGP automatically recognizes this and advises the
recipient that the decrypted plaintext appears to be a PKZIP file.

For the technically curious readers, the current version of PGP uses
the freeware ZIP compression routines written by Jean-loup Gailly,
Mark Adler, and Richard B. Wales.  This ZIP software uses
functionally-equivalent compression algorithms as those used by
PKWare's new PKZIP 2.0.  This ZIP compression software was selected
for PGP mainly because of its free portable C source code
availability, and because it has a really good compression ratio, and
because it's fast.



Message Digests and Digital Signatures
--------------------------------------

To create a digital signature, PGP encrypts with your secret key.
But PGP doesn't actually encrypt your entire message with your secret
key-- that would take too long.  Instead, PGP encrypts a "message
digest".

The message digest is a compact (128 bit) "distillate" of your
message, similar in concept to a checksum.  You can also think of it
as a "fingerprint" of the message.  The message digest "represents"
your message, such that if the message were altered in any way, a
different message digest would be computed from it.  This makes it
possible to detect any changes made to the message by a forger.  A
message digest is computed using a cryptographically strong one-way
hash function of the message.  It would be computationally infeasible
for an attacker to devise a substitute message that would produce an
identical message digest.  In that respect, a message digest is much
better than a checksum, because it is easy to devise a different
message that would produce the same checksum.  But like a checksum,
you can't derive the original message from its message digest.

A message digest alone is not enough to authenticate a message.  The
message digest algorithm is publicly known, and does not require
knowledge of any secret keys to calculate.  If all we did was attach
a message digest to a message, then a forger could alter a message
and simply attach a new message digest calculated from the new
altered message.  To provide real authentication, the sender has to
encrypt (sign) the message digest with his secret key.

A message digest is calculated from the message by the sender.  The
sender's secret key is used to encrypt the message digest and an
electronic timestamp, forming a digital signature, or signature
certificate.  The sender sends the digital signature along with the
message.  The receiver receives the message and the digital
signature, and recovers the original message digest from the digital
signature by decrypting it with the sender's public key.  The
receiver computes a new message digest from the message, and checks
to see if it matches the one recovered from the digital signature.  If
it matches, then that proves the message was not altered, and it came
from the sender who owns the public key used to check the signature.

A potential forger would have to either produce an altered message
that produces an identical message digest (which is infeasible), or
he would have to create a new digital signature from a different
message digest (also infeasible, without knowing the true sender's
secret key).

Digital signatures prove who sent the message, and that the message
was not altered either by error or design.  It also provides
non-repudiation, which means the sender cannot easily disavow his
signature on the message.

Using message digests to form digital signatures has other advantages
besides being faster than directly signing the entire actual message
with the secret key.  Using message digests allows signatures to be
of a standard small fixed size, regardless of the size of the actual
message.  It also allows the software to check the message integrity
automatically, in a manner similar to using checksums.  And it allows
signatures to be stored separately from messages, perhaps even in a
public archive, without revealing sensitive information about the
actual messages, because no one can derive any message content from a
message digest.

The message digest algorithm used here is the MD5 Message Digest
Algorithm, placed in the public domain by RSA Data Security, Inc.
MD5's designer, Ronald Rivest, writes this about MD5:

"It is conjectured that the difficulty of coming up with two messages
having the same message digest is on the order of 2^64 operations,
and that the difficulty of coming up with any message having a given
message digest is on the order of 2^128 operations.  The MD5
algorithm has been carefully scrutinized for weaknesses.  It is,
however, a relatively new algorithm and further security analysis is
of course justified, as is the case with any new proposal of this
sort.  The level of security provided by MD5 should be sufficient for
implementing very high security hybrid digital signature schemes
based on MD5 and the RSA public-key cryptosystem."



Compatibility with Previous Versions of PGP
===========================================

I'm sorry, this version of PGP is not compatible with PGP version
1.0.  If you have keys generated with version 1.0, you will have to
generate new keys to use with this version.  This version of PGP uses
all new algorithms for conventional cryptography, compression, and
message digests, as well as using a much better approach to key
management.  There were just too many changes to make it compatible
with the old format messages, signatures, and keys.  Perhaps we could
have provided a special conversion utility to convert old keys into
new keys, but we were all tired and wanted to get the new release out
the door.  Besides, converting the old keys into new keys would
probably create more problems than it would solve, because we have
changed to a new recommended uniform style for the user ID that
includes the full name and E-mail address in a particular syntax.

We made some effort to design the internal data structures of this
version of PGP to be adaptable to future changes, so that hopefully
you will not be required to discard and regenerate your keys in future
versions.


Vulnerabilities
===============

No data security system is impenetrable.  PGP can be circumvented in
a variety of ways.  In any data security system, you have to ask
yourself if the information you are trying to protect is more
valuable to your attacker than the cost of the attack.  This should
lead you to protecting yourself from the cheapest attacks, while not
worrying about the more expensive attacks.

Some of the discussion that follows may seem unduly paranoid, but
such an attitude is appropriate for a reasonable discussion of
vulnerability issues.


Compromised Pass Phrase and Secret Key
--------------------------------------

Probably the simplest attack is if you leave your pass phrase for
your secret key written down somewhere.  If someone gets it and also
gets your secret key file, they can read your messages and make
signatures in your name.

Don't use obvious passwords that can be easily guessed, such as the
names of your kids or spouse.  If you make your pass phrase a single
word, it can be easily guessed by having a computer try all the words
in the dictionary until it finds your password.  That's why a pass
phrase is so much better than a password.  A more sophisticated
attacker may have his computer scan a book of famous quotations to
find your pass phrase.  An easy to remember but hard to guess pass
phrase can be easily constructed by some creatively nonsensical
sayings or very obscure literary quotes.

For further details, see the section "How to Protect Secret Keys from
Disclosure" in the Essential Topics volume of the PGP User's Guide.


Public Key Tampering
--------------------

A major vulnerability exists if public keys are tampered with.  This
may be the most crucially important vulnerability of a public key
cryptosystem, in part because most novices don't immediately
recognize it.  The importance of this vulnerability, and appropriate
hygienic countermeasures, are detailed in the section "How to Protect
Public Keys from Tampering" in the Essential Topics volume.

To summarize:  When you use someone's public key, make certain it has
not been tampered with.  A new public key from someone else should be
trusted only if you got it directly from its owner, or if it has been
signed by someone you trust.  Make sure no one else can tamper with
your own public key ring.  Maintain physical control of both your
public key ring and your secret key ring, preferably on your own
personal computer rather than on a remote timesharing system.  Keep a
backup copy of both key rings.


"Not Quite Deleted" Files
-------------------------

Another potential security problem is caused by how most operating
systems delete files.  When you encrypt a file and then delete the
original plaintext file, the operating system doesn't actually
physically erase the data.  It merely marks those disk blocks as
deleted, allowing the space to be reused later.  It's sort of like
discarding sensitive paper documents in the paper recycling bin
instead of the paper shredder.  The disk blocks still contain the
original sensitive data you wanted to erase, and will probably
eventually be overwritten by new data at some point in the future.
If an attacker reads these deleted disk blocks soon after they have
been deallocated, he could recover your plaintext.

In fact this could even happen accidentally, if for some reason
something went wrong with the disk and some files were accidentally
deleted or corrupted.  A disk recovery program may be run to recover
the damaged files, but this often means some previously deleted files
are resurrected along with everything else.  Your confidential files
that you thought were gone forever could then reappear and be
inspected by whomever is attempting to recover your damaged disk.
Even while you are creating the original message with a word
processor or text editor, the editor may be creating multiple
temporary copies of your text on the disk, just because of its
internal workings.  These temporary copies of your text are deleted
by the word processor when it's done, but these sensitive fragments
are still on your disk somewhere.

Let me tell you a true horror story.  I had a friend, married with
young children, who once had a brief and not very serious affair.
She wrote a letter to her lover on her word processor, and deleted
the letter after she sent it.  Later, after the affair was over, the
floppy disk got damaged somehow and she had to recover it because it
contained other important documents.  She asked her husband to
salvage the disk, which seemed perfectly safe because she knew she
had deleted the incriminating letter.  Her husband ran a commercial
disk recovery software package to salvage the files.  It recovered
the files alright, including the deleted letter.  He read it, which
set off a tragic chain of events.

The only way to prevent the plaintext from reappearing is to somehow
cause the deleted plaintext files to be overwritten.  Unless you know
for sure that all the deleted disk blocks will soon be reused, you
must take positive steps to overwrite the plaintext file, and also
any fragments of it on the disk left by your word processor.  You can
overwrite the original plaintext file after encryption by using the
PGP -w (wipe) option.  You can take care of any fragments of the
plaintext left on the disk by using any of the disk utilities
available that can overwrite all of the unused blocks on a disk.  For
example, the Norton Utilities for MSDOS can do this.


Viruses and Trojan Horses
-------------------------

Another attack could involve a specially-tailored hostile computer
virus or worm that might infect PGP or your operating system.  This
hypothetical virus could be designed to capture your pass phrase or
secret key or deciphered messages, and covertly write the captured
information to a file or send it through a network to the virus's
owner.  Or it might alter PGP's behavior so that signatures are not
properly checked.  This attack is cheaper than cryptanalytic attacks.

Defending against this falls under the category of defending against
viral infection generally.  There are some moderately capable
anti-viral products commercially available, and there are hygienic
procedures to follow that can greatly reduce the chances of viral
infection.  A complete treatment of anti-viral and anti-worm
countermeasures is beyond the scope of this document.  PGP has no
defenses against viruses, and assumes your own personal computer is a
trustworthy execution environment.  If such a virus or worm actually
appeared, hopefully word would soon get around warning everyone.

Another similar attack involves someone creating a clever imitation
of PGP that behaves like PGP in most respects, but doesn't work the
way it's supposed to.  For example, it might be deliberately crippled
to not check signatures properly, allowing bogus key certificates to
be accepted.  This "Trojan horse" version of PGP is not hard for an
attacker to create, because PGP source code is widely available, so
anyone could modify the source code and produce a lobotomized zombie
imitation PGP that looks real but does the bidding of its diabolical
master.  This Trojan horse version of PGP could then be widely
circulated, claiming to be from me.  How insidious.

You should make an effort to get your copy of PGP from a reliable
source, whatever that means.  Or perhaps from more than one
independent source, and compare them with a file comparison utility.

There are other ways to check PGP for tampering, using digital
signatures.  If someone you trust signs the executable version of
PGP, vouching for the fact that it has not been infected or tampered
with, you can be reasonably sure that you have a good copy.  You
could use an earlier trusted version of PGP to check the signature on
a later suspect version of PGP.  But this will not help at all if
your operating system is infected, nor will it detect if your
original copy of PGP.EXE has been maliciously altered in such a way
as to compromise its own ability to check signatures.  This test also
assumes that you have a good trusted copy of the public key that you
use to check the signature on the PGP executable.


Physical Security Breach
------------------------

A physical security breach may allow someone to physically acquire
your plaintext files or printed messages.  A determined opponent
might accomplish this through burglary, trash-picking, unreasonable
search and seizure, or bribery, blackmail or infiltration of your
staff.  Some of these attacks may be especially feasible against
grassroots political organizations that depend on a largely volunteer
staff.  It has been widely reported in the press that the FBI's
COINTELPRO program used burglary, infiltration, and illegal bugging
against antiwar and civil rights groups.  And look what happened at
the Watergate Hotel.

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security just because you have
a cryptographic tool.  Cryptographic techniques protect data only
while it's encrypted-- direct physical security violations can still
compromise plaintext data or written or spoken information.

This kind of attack is cheaper than cryptanalytic attacks on PGP.


Tempest Attacks
---------------

Another kind of attack that has been used by well-equipped opponents
involves the remote detection of the electromagnetic signals from
your computer.  This expensive and somewhat labor-intensive attack is
probably still cheaper than direct cryptanalytic attacks.  An
appropriately instrumented van can park near your office and remotely
pick up all of your keystrokes and messages displayed on your
computer video screen.  This would compromise all of your passwords,
messages, etc.  This attack can be thwarted by properly shielding all
of your computer equipment and network cabling so that it does not
emit these signals.  This shielding technology is known as "Tempest",
and is used by some Government agencies and defense contractors.
There are hardware vendors who supply Tempest shielding commercially,
although it may be subject to some kind of Government licensing.  Now
why do you suppose the Government would restrict access to Tempest
shielding?


Exposure on Multi-user Systems
------------------------------

PGP was originally designed for a single-user MSDOS machine under
your direct physical control.  I run PGP at home on my own PC, and
unless someone breaks into my house or monitors my electromagnetic
emissions, they probably can't see my plaintext files or secret keys.

But now PGP also runs on multi-user systems such as Unix and VAX/VMS.
On multi-user systems, there are much greater risks of your plaintext
or keys or passwords being exposed.  The Unix system administrator or
a clever intruder can read your plaintext files, or perhaps even use
special software to covertly monitor your keystrokes or read what's
on your screen.  On a Unix system, any other user can read your
environment information remotely by simply using the Unix "ps"
command.  Similar problems exist for MSDOS machines connected on a
local area network.  The actual security risk is dependent on your
particular situation.  Some multi-user systems may be safe because
all the users are trusted, or because they have system security
measures that are safe enough to withstand the attacks available to
the intruders, or because there just aren't any sufficiently
interested intruders.  Some Unix systems are safe because they are
only used by one user-- there are even some notebook computers
running Unix.  It would be unreasonable to simply exclude PGP from
running on all Unix systems.

PGP is not designed to protect your data while it is in plaintext
form on a compromised system.  Nor can it prevent an intruder from
using sophisticated measures to read your secret key while it is
being used.  You will just have to recognize these risks on
multi-user systems, and adjust your expectations and behavior
accordingly.  Perhaps your situation is such that you should consider
only running PGP on an isolated single-user system under your direct
physical control.  That's what I do, and that's what I recommend.


Traffic Analysis
----------------

Even if the attacker cannot read the contents of your encrypted
messages, he may be able to infer at least some useful information by
observing where the messages come from and where they are going, the
size of the messages, and the time of day the messages are sent.
This is analogous to the attacker looking at your long distance phone
bill to see who you called and when and for how long, even though the
actual content of your calls is unknown to the attacker.  This is
called traffic analysis.  PGP alone does not protect against traffic
analysis.  Solving this problem would require specialized
communication protocols designed to reduce exposure to traffic
analysis in your communication environment, possibly with some
cryptographic assistance.


Cryptanalysis
-------------

An expensive and formidable cryptanalytic attack could possibly be
mounted by someone with vast supercomputer resources, such as a
Government intelligence agency.  They might crack your RSA key by
using some new secret factoring breakthrough.  Perhaps so, but it is
noteworthy that the US Government trusts the RSA algorithm enough in
some cases to use it to protect its own nuclear weapons, according to
Ron Rivest.  And civilian academia has been intensively attacking it
without success since 1978.

Perhaps the Government has some classified methods of cracking the
IDEA(tm) conventional encryption algorithm used in PGP.  This is
every cryptographer's worst nightmare.  There can be no absolute
security guarantees in practical cryptographic implementations.

Still, some optimism seems justified.  The IDEA algorithm's designers
are among the best cryptographers in Europe.  It has had extensive
security analysis and peer review from some of the best cryptanalysts
in the unclassified world.  It appears to have some design advantages
over the DES in withstanding differential cryptanalysis, which has
been used to crack the DES.

Besides, even if this algorithm has some subtle unknown weaknesses,
PGP compresses the plaintext before encryption, which should greatly
reduce those weaknesses.  The computational workload to crack it is
likely to be much more expensive than the value of the message.

If your situation justifies worrying about very formidable attacks of
this caliber, then perhaps you should contact a data security
consultant for some customized data security approaches tailored to
your special needs.  Boulder Software Engineering, whose address and
phone are given at the end of this document, can provide such
services.


In summary, without good cryptographic protection of your data
communications, it may have been practically effortless and perhaps
even routine for an opponent to intercept your messages, especially
those sent through a modem or E-mail system.  If you use PGP and
follow reasonable precautions, the attacker will have to expend far
more effort and expense to violate your privacy.

If you protect yourself against the simplest attacks, and you feel
confident that your privacy is not going to be violated by a
determined and highly resourceful attacker, then you'll probably be
safe using PGP.  PGP gives you Pretty Good Privacy.


Legal Issues
============


Trademarks, Copyrights, and Warranties
--------------------------------------

"Pretty Good Privacy", "Phil's Pretty Good Software", and the "Pretty
Good" label for computer software and hardware products are all
trademarks of Philip Zimmermann and Phil's Pretty Good Software.  PGP
is (c) Copyright Philip R. Zimmermann, 1990-1992.  Philip Zimmermann
also holds the copyright for the PGP User's Manual, as well as any
foreign language translations of the manual or the software.

The author assumes no liability for damages resulting from the use of
this software, even if the damage results from defects in this
software, and makes no representations concerning the merchantability
of this software or its suitability for any specific purpose.  It is
provided "as is" without express or implied warranty of any kind.


Patent Rights on the Algorithms
-------------------------------

When I first released PGP, I half-expected to encounter some form of
legal harassment from the Government.  Indeed, there has been legal
harrassment, but it hasn't come from the Government-- it has come
from a private corporation.

The RSA public key cryptosystem was developed at MIT with Federal
funding from grants from the National Science Foundation and the
Navy.  It is patented by MIT (U.S. patent #4,405,829, issued 20 Sep
1983).  A company in California called Public Key Partners (PKP) holds
the exclusive commercial license to sell and sub-license the RSA
public key cryptosystem.  The author of this software implementation
of the RSA algorithm is providing this implementation for educational
use only.  Licensing this algorithm from PKP is the responsibility of
you, the user, not Philip Zimmermann, the author of this software
implementation.  The author assumes no liability for any patent
infringement that may result from the unlicensed use by the user of
the underlying RSA algorithm used in this software.  Foreign users
should note that the RSA patent does not apply outside the US, and
there is no RSA patent in any other country.  Federal agencies may
use it because the Government paid for the development of RSA.

Unfortunately, PKP is not offering any licensing of their RSA patent
to end users of PGP.  This essentially makes PGP contraband in the
USA.  Jim Bidzos, president of PKP, threatened to take legal action
against me unless I stop distributing PGP, until they can devise a
licensing scheme for it.  I agreed to this, since PGP is already in
wide circulation and waiting a while for a licensing arrangement from
PKP seemed reasonable.  Mr. Bidzos assured me (he even used the word
"promise") several times since the initial 5 June 91 release of PGP
that they were working on a licensing scheme for PGP.  Apparently, my
release of PGP helped provide the impetus for them to offer some sort
of a freeware-style license for noncommercial use of the RSA
algorithm.  However, in December 1991 Mr. Bidzos said he had no plans
to ever license the RSA algorithm to PGP users, and denied ever
implying that he would.  Meanwhile, I have continued to refrain from
distributing PGP, although I've recently updated the PGP User's
Guide, and have provided a lot of design guidance for these new
revisions of PGP.

I wrote my PGP software from scratch, with my own implementation of
the RSA algorithm.  I didn't steal any software from PKP.  Before
publishing PGP, I got a formal written legal opinion from a patent
attorney with extensive experience in software patents.  I'm
convinced that publishing PGP the way I did does not violate patent
law.  However, it is a well known axiom in the US legal system that
regardless of the law, he with the most money and lawyers prevails,
if not by actually winning then by crushing the little guy with legal
expenses.

Not only did PKP acquire the exclusive patent rights for the RSA
cryptosystem, which was developed with your tax dollars, but they
also somehow acquired the exclusive rights to three other patents
covering rival public key schemes invented by others, also developed
with your tax dollars.  This essentially gives one company a legal
lock in the USA on nearly all practical public key cryptosystems.
They even appear to be claiming patent rights on the very concept of
public key cryptography, regardless of what clever new original
algorithms are independently invented by others.  And you thought
patent law was designed to encourage innovation!  PKP does not
actually develop any software-- they don't even have an engineering
department-- they are essentially a litigation company.

Public key cryptography is destined to become a crucial technology in
the protection of our civil liberties and privacy in our increasingly
connected society.  Why should the Government try to limit access to
this key technology, when a single monopoly can do it for them?

It appears certain that there will be future releases of PGP,
regardless of the outcome of licensing problems with Public Key
Partners.  If PKP does not license PGP, then future releases of PGP
might not come from me.  There are countless fans of PGP outside the
US, and many of them are software engineers who want to improve PGP
and promote it, regardless of what I do.  The second release of PGP
was a joint effort of an international team of software engineers,
implementing enhancements to the original PGP with design guidance
from me.  It is being released by Peter Gutmann in New Zealand, out
of reach of US patent law.  It is being released only in Europe and
New Zealand, but it may spontaneously spread to the USA without any
help from me or the PGP development team.

The IDEA(tm) conventional block cipher used by PGP is covered by a
patent in Europe, held by ETH and a Swiss company called Ascom-Tech
AG.  The patent number is PCT/CH91/00117.  International patents are
pending.  IDEA(tm) is a trademark of Ascom-Tech AG.  There is no
license fee required for noncommercial use.  Commercial users may
obtain licensing details from Dieter Profos, Ascom Tech AG, Solothurn
Lab, Postfach 151, 4502 Solothurn, Switzerland, Tel [phone],
Fax [phone].

The ZIP compression routines in PGP come from freeware source code,
with the author's permission.  I'm not aware of any patents on the
ZIP algorithm, but you're welcome to check into that question
yourself.  If there are any obscure patent claims that apply to ZIP,
then sorry, you'll have to take care of the patent licensing, not me.

All this patent stuff reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon I saw in the
newspaper where Lucy showed Charlie Brown a fallen autumn leaf and
said "This is the first leaf to fall this year."  Charlie Brown said,
"How do you know that?  Leaves have been falling for weeks."  Lucy
replied, "I had this one notarized."


Licensing and Distribution
--------------------------

In the USA PKP controls, through US patent law, the licensing of the
RSA algorithm.  But I have no objection to anyone freely using or
distributing my PGP software, without payment of fees to me.  You must
keep the copyright notices on PGP and keep this documentation with
it.  However, if you live in the USA, this may not satisfy any legal
obligations you may have to PKP for using the RSA algorithm as
mentioned above.

In fact, if you live in the USA, and you are not a Federal agency,
you shouldn't actually run PGP on your computer, because Public Key
Partners wants to forbid you from running my software.  PGP is
contraband.

Of course, I can't give any assurances, but my guess is that it seems
unlikely that PKP would waste their time pursuing PGP end users for
patent infringement.  There are just too many PGP users to go after.
And why would they single you out?  But I certainly wouldn't want to
imply that you do anything improper-- if PKP were offering licenses,
I would urge you to obtain one.  But since they aren't, well, I guess
you should just refrain from using PGP if you live in the USA.

PGP is not shareware, it's freeware.  Forbidden freeware.  Published
as a community service.  If I sold PGP for money, then I would get
sued by PKP for using their RSA algorithm.  More importantly, giving
PGP away for free will encourage far more people to use it, which
hopefully will have a greater social impact.  This could lead to
widespread awareness and use of the RSA public key cryptosystem,
which will probably make more money for PKP in the long run.  If only
they could see that.

All the source code for PGP is available for free under the "Copyleft"
General Public License from the Free Software Foundation (FSF).  A
copy of the FSF General Public License is included in the source
release package of PGP.

Regardless of and perhaps contrary to some provisions of the FSF
General Public License, the following terms apply:

1)  Written discussions of PGP in magazines or books may include
    fragments of PGP source code and documentation, without
    restrictions.

2)  Although the FSF General Public License allows non-proprietary
    derivative products, it prohibits proprietary derivative products.
    Despite this, I may grant you a special license if you want to
    derive a proprietary commercial product from some of PGP's parts.
    There may or may not be a fee depending on what kind of a deal you
    plan to pursue with PKP.  Retaining my copyright notice and
    attribution might suffice in some cases.  Give me a call and we'll
    discuss it.  I'm real easy to please.

Feel free to disseminate the complete PGP release package as widely
as possible.  Give it to all your friends.  If you have access to any
electronic Bulletin Boards Systems, please upload the complete PGP
executable object release package to as many BBS's as possible.  You
may disseminate the PGP source release package too, if you've got
it.  The PGP version 2.0 executable object release package for MSDOS
contains the PGP executable software, documentation, sample key rings
including my own public key, and signatures for the software and this
manual, all in one PKZIP compressed file called PGP20.ZIP.  The PGP
source release package for MSDOS contains all the C source files in
one PKZIP compressed file called PGP20SRC.ZIP.

You may obtain free copies or updates to PGP from thousands of BBS's
worldwide or from other public sources such as Internet FTP sites.
Don't ask me for a copy directly from me, since I'd rather avoid
further legal problems with PKP at this time.  I might be able to
tell you where you can get it, however.

After all this work I have to admit I wouldn't mind getting some fan
mail for PGP, to gauge its popularity.  Let me know what you think
about it and how many of your friends use it.  Bug reports and
suggestions for enhancing PGP are welcome, too.  Perhaps a future PGP
release will reflect your suggestions.

This project has not been funded and the project has nearly eaten me
alive.  This means you can't count on a reply to your mail, unless
you only need a short written reply and you include a stamped
self-addressed envelope.  But I do reply to E-mail.  Please keep it in
English, as my foreign language skills are weak.  If you call and I'm
not in, it's best to just try again later.  I usually don't return
long distance phone calls, unless you leave a message that I can call
you collect.  If you need any significant amount of my time, I am
available on a paid consulting basis, and I do return those calls.

The most inconvenient mail I get is for some well-intentioned person
to send me a few dollars asking me for a copy of PGP.  I can't send
it to them because of the legal threats from PKP (or worse--
sometimes these requests are from foreign countries, and I would be
risking violating cryptographic export control laws).  Even if there
were no legal hassles involved in sending PGP to them, they usually
don't send enough money to make it worth my time ($50 might be worth
my time if I were actually selling this stuff).  I'm just not set up
as a low cost low volume mail order business.  I can't just ignore
the request and keep the money, because they probably regard the
money as a fee for me to fulfill their request.  If I return the
money, I might have to get in my car and drive down to the post
office and buy some postage stamps, because these requests rarely
include a stamped self-addressed envelope.  And I have to take the
time to write a polite reply that I can't do it.  If I postpone the
reply and set the letter down on my desk, it might be buried within
minutes and won't see the light of day again for months.  Multiply
these minor inconveniences by the number of requests I get, and you
can see the problem.  Isn't it enough that the software is free?  It
would be nicer if people could try to get PGP from any of the myriad
other sources.  If you don't have a modem, ask a friend to get it for
you.  If you can't find it yourself, I don't mind answering a quick
phone call.

If anyone wants to volunteer to improve PGP, please let me know.  It
could certainly use some more work.  Some features were deferred to
get it out the door.  A number of PGP users have since donated their
time to port PGP to Unix on Sun SPARCstations, to Ultrix, to VAX/VMS,
to OS/2, to the Amiga, and to the Atari ST.  Perhaps you can help
port it to some new environments, such as the Apple Macintosh, MS
Windows, X windows, or XVT.  But please let me know if you plan to
port PGP, to avoid duplication of effort, and to avoid starting with
an obsolete version of the source code.

Future versions of PGP may have to change the data formats for
messages, signatures, keys and key rings, in order to provide
important new features.  This may cause backward compatibility
problems with this version of PGP.  Future releases may provide
conversion utilities to convert old keys, but you may have to dispose
of old messages created with the old PGP.


Export Controls
---------------

The Government has made it illegal in many cases to export good
cryptographic technology, and that may include PGP.  They regard this
kind of software as munitions.  This is determined by volatile State
Department policies, not fixed laws.  I will not export this software
out of the US or Canada in cases when it is illegal to do so under US
State Department policies, and I assume no responsibility for other
people exporting it on their own.

If you live outside the US or Canada, I advise you not to violate US
State Department policies by getting PGP from a US source.  Since
thousands of domestic users got it after its initial publication, it
somehow leaked out of the US and spread itself widely abroad, like
dandelion seeds blowing in the wind.  If PGP has already found its
way into your country, then I don't think you're violating US export
law if you pick it up from a source outside of the US.  And there are
no import restrictions on bringing cryptographic technology into the
USA.

Some foreign governments impose serious penalties on anyone inside
their country using encrypted communications.  In some countries they
might even shoot you for that.



Recommended Introductory Readings
=================================

1)  Dorothy Denning, "Cryptography and Data Security", Addison-Wesley,
    Reading, MA 1982
2)  Dorothy Denning, "Protecting Public Keys and Signature Keys",
    IEEE Computer, Feb 1983
3)  Martin E. Hellman, "The Mathematics of Public-Key Cryptography,"
    Scientific American, August 1979
4)  Philip Zimmermann, "A Proposed Standard Format for RSA
    Cryptosystems", IEEE Computer, Sep 1986

Other Readings
==============

5)  Ronald Rivest, "The MD5 Message Digest Algorithm", MIT Laboratory
    for Computer Science, 1991
6)  Xuejia Lai, "On the Design and Security of Block Ciphers",
    Institute for Signal and Information Processing, ETH-Zentrum,
    Zurich, Switzerland, 1992
7)  Xuejia Lai, James L. Massey, Sean Murphy, "Markov Ciphers and
    Differential Cryptanalysis", Advances in Cryptology- EUROCRYPT'91



To Contact the Author
=====================

Philip Zimmermann may be reached at:

Boulder Software Engineering
3021 Eleventh Street
Boulder, Colorado 80304  USA
Phone [phone] (voice or FAX)  (10:00am - 7:00pm Mountain Time)
Internet:  [e-mail]