Gnugpg

[Phillip Susi]

Old Rocker wrote:
> Maybe a bit OT, but S/MIME (which I wouldn't call standard....) is much 

It's just as standard as ordinary RFC 822 mime encoded email.

> less secure than the algorithms used in GPG and can be broken 
> relatively easily.  However, for most purposes its adequate providing 
> you haven't got sensitive stuff being encrypted.

This is completely untrue; it uses the the strongest algorithms 
available.  Specifically either MD5 or SHA1 are usually used for 
fingerprinting and RSA or DSA ( typically 1024 bit ) are used for 
public/private key signing/encryption, with typically a 128 bit 3DES or 
AES cipher used to encrypt the message body, using a random key which is 
then encrypted using each recipient's public key.

Baring a compromise of your private key ( meaning both the certificate 
file as well as the password used to encrypt it ), the system is 
unbreakable.

> 
> Probably an exaggeration, but don't forget the US Secret Service once 
> said that if all the personal computers in the world were set to crack 
> one PGP encrypted message, it would taken ten times the age of the 
> universe to crack it.  The algorithms used in later versions of PGP and 
> now GPG are much more secure, and I'd rather use just one system for my 
> encryption and signing that works.
> 

I'd rather use just one as well, and I prefer to use the one that is an 
based on ISO standards ( x.509, PKCS, etc ) rather than a home brewed 
"one off" open source solution.


> However, the OP was asking about GPGME, which is a library that allows 
> the integration of GPG into a package that doesn't yet support it.


Use libopenssl instead ;)