An Open Specification for Pretty Good Privacy (openpgp)

Last Modified: 2005-07-10

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/openpgp

Chair(s):

  • Derek Atkins <derek@ihtfp.com>

    Security Area Director(s):

  • Tim Polk <tim.polk@nist.gov>
  • Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf@mit.edu>

    Security Area Advisor:

  • Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf@mit.edu>

    Mailing Lists:

    General Discussion: ietf-openpgp@imc.org
    To Subscribe: ietf-openpgp-request@imc.org
    In Body: Only the word subscribe
    Archive: http://www.imc.org/ietf-openpgp/mail-archive/

    Description of Working Group:

    PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, first appeared on the Internet in 1991.
    It
    has enjoyed significant popularity amongst the Internet Community.

    PGP is used both for protecting E-mail and File Storage. It presents a
    way to digitally sign and encrypt information "objects." As such it is
    well suited for any store and forward application.

    The goal of the OpenPGP working group is to provide IETF standards for
    the algorithms and formats of PGP processed objects as well as
    providing
    the MIME framework for exchanging them via e-mail or other transport
    protocols.

    Because there is a significant installed base of PGP users, the
    working
    group will consider compatibilty issues to avoid disenfranchising the
    existing community of PGP users.

    Security Issues:

    The whole purpose of Open-PGP is to provide security services.

    Goals and Milestones:

    Done  Submit Internet-Draft for PGP Key Format & Message Specification
    Done  Submit Internet Draft for MIME encapsulation of PGP Messages Specification
    Done  Issue WG Last Call for PGP Key Format & Message Specification Internet-Draft documents
    Done  Submit PGP Key Format & Message Specification Internet-Draft to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.
    Done  WG Last Call for PGP/MIME draft
    Done  Submit PGP/MIME draft to IESG for consideration as PROPOSED standard
    May 2001  Submit Multiple Sig draft to IESG for consideration as PROPOSED standard
    Jul 2001  Begin RFC2440, PGP/MIME Interoperability testing
    Aug 2001  Request DRAFT status for RFC2440

    Internet-Drafts:

    The Camellia Cipher in OpenPGP (8038 bytes)

    Request For Comments:

    OpenPGP Message Format (RFC 2440) (141371 bytes) obsoleted by RFC 4880
    MIME Security with OpenPGP (RFC 3156) (26809 bytes) updates RFC 2015
    OpenPGP Message Format (RFC 4880) (203706 bytes) obsoletes RFC 1991,RFC 2440
    IETF Secretariat - Please send questions, comments, and/or suggestions to ietf-web@ietf.org.

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