PGP compatibility

stewarts at ix.netcom.com stewarts at ix.netcom.com
Tue Nov 11 10:34:24 PST 1997



>> My copy of PGP 5.0 seems to be completely compatible with 2.6 versions.  This 
...
>Of course your copy of PGP 5.0 is compatible with prior versions. I know
>this, you know this, and the anonymous author claiming otherwise knows

Some of the free 5.0 versions can use RSA keys, and some can't.
Robert has the $5 RSA plugin, so his can.  The Eudora version can't,
and I think the MIT version can, or maybe it was the one on www.pgp.com.

By "can't", I mean that it not only won't let you generate RSA keys,
it also won't use existing RSA private keys from your old secring.pgp file;
I don't know if it can encrypt to other people's RSA public keys or not.

I found this very annoying a couple months ago when I was rebuilding my
PGP from backups after a disk crash :-)  The 5.0 version I'd been using
before the crash was happily using my RSA keys, and the brand new Eudora version
I used after the crash wouldn't take them, and wasn't very clear about why.
One of the local PGP folks told me there was a difference, and loading the right
version took care of the problem, and I don't remember encrypting to or
validating from any RSA keys in between.

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts at ix.netcom.com
Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639







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