The Unofficial International PGP Home Page

This is the home page of the Unofficial International family of PGP implementations, the latest of which is PGP 2.64ui, the successor to PGP 2.6ui, published by "mathew", 2.62ui,published by Tony Lezard, and 2.63ui, published by myself. The ui series is based originally on version 2.3a. This latest version is published by myself, Steve Crompton.

Please do not confuse this version with the (somewhat official) International version of PGP published by Stale Schumaker and described by The International PGP Home Page, which is based on PGP 2.6.2 published by MIT.

This version is being made available for a number of reasons:

• It is the only version fully compatible with *all* versions of PGP from 2.0 to 2.7
• It incorporates a number of bug fixes and features not available in the MIT release (see below) or in Stale Schumaker's 2.6.x.i releases based on the MIT release.
• This version, like 2.3a and 2.6xui before it, is published under the terms of the GPL. Consequently:
  • You are not bound by the RSADSI licence since this version does not use RSAREF (which forbids commercial use and unauthorised use of the cryptographic routines), as you are with MIT PGP.
  • You are not bound by the MIT licence (which requires the program to produce output that cannot be read by earlier versions), as you are with both MIT PGP and Staale Schumacher's PGP 2.6.xi.
  • you can therefore do what you like with the code of the program provided any derivative work is also GPL'd.
  • The only relevant patent for users outside the USA is Ascom-Tech's patent on IDEA. For non-commercial use it's free, anywhere. For commercial use you need a license, but Ascom-Tech offers a single-user license for a modest fee. See

    http://www.ascom.ch/systec

Users inside the USA may not legally use 2.64ui, because the RSA patent is in effect there. USA residents are advised to obtain one of the MIT versions which have a license for non-commercial use of RSA.

However, I note in passing that by using the armor_version parameter in CONFIG.TXT, that armored output from PGP 2.64ui can be made difficult or impossible to distinguish from other versions.

Note that I personally have not done very much of the actual coding on this version. However if bugs are reported or constructive suggestions for improvements made I will pass them on to the individual(s) who have done the bulk of the work to make this release possible. I am assured that continuing support will be provided.

This site will also post any bugs or concerns that are brought to our attention and our comments.

This is a partial list of the changes and fixes since 2.63ui. A complete list is in file 264UICHG.ASC, which is inside both ZIP distribution files.

• More robust armortext handling.

  Some mailer systems will change a capital F in text to =46. Probably this is for recognizing "From" at the start of a new message and to insure a false indication of a new message does not occur. PGP 2.64ui contains code to automatically handle this situation and to avoid some crashes with other bad armortext.

• Error checking of numeric parameters in CONFIG.TXT

  PGP now checks for valid numeric parameters (e.g. VERBOSE=).

• 2.64ui fixes some bugs in LabelEncrypt and signature verify output if Verbose=0

• While 2.64ui does not handle the new DSS/DH keys generated by PGP version 5, it has been modified to give only a single warning message if such keys are found in the keyring files.

• The output format of -kv has been slightly modified for compatibility with Private Idaho.

• Support (in source code) for WATCOM Compiler by Georg Bauer

• Use of fast 386 assembly code for MD5 Signature digests by Wojtek Pilorz. Note: previous code is used if PGP is run on a 286 or 808x CPU. Also use of 386 assembly code may be disabled by setting environment variable MD5NO386 to any value.

This is a partial list of the changes and fixes to 2.63ui since 2.62ui. A complete list is in file 263UICHG.ASC.

• Added CONFIG.TXT Parameters:

  • LabelEncrypt = on # Label Encrypted Armored files with Recipient(s)

    This will add readable text in front of an encrypted and armored file listing the public keys used to encrypt it. The format of the text is similar to what appears on the console during (-l) decryption.

  • PrePendSigV=on # Prepend Signature Verification msg to output text

    When verifying the signature on a text (not binary) file, and a detached signature (-b) is not requested, PGP 2.63ui will prepend a message with the results of the signature verification (good or bad) similar to what appears on the console.

• Expanded Compatibility with Early PGP Versions.

  version_byte=3 is usually set to Emulate PGP 2.6 after 9/1/94

  Version_byte must be set to 2 before encrypting/signing messages to be decrypted/verified by PGP 2.2 or 2.3a.

  Also, unique to PGP 2.63ui, is the ability to set version_byte to 2 in extracted keys (-kx[a]). This allows PGP 2.63ui to extract keys which may have been created and/or signed by MIT PGP or by a ui version with version_byte set to 3 and create an extracted key which may be added (-ka) by PGP 2.3a.

  Note that the reverse is not true. If version_byte=3, keys created with version_byte=2 are -not- changed when extracted.

• Expanded Error Checking

  Most disk writes are now checked for errors or running out of disk space.

  Key Generation and other Keyring maintenance operations check for write access to public and (where required) secret keyrings before lengthy processing starts. Previous versions were not checking if the keyrings were set to read-only, which led to invalid results.

• PGP 2.63ui allows you to change UserID's of keys not your own (corresponding secret key not present). You can sign the new ID with your own secret key but (obviously) not with the other person's secret key.

PGP 2.64ui is distributed in two ZIP files

pg264ui.zip [executables & documentation]
pg264uis.zip [source code & documentation]

Each zip file contains a MANIFEST signed by me which gives the MD5 digests of all other files within the ZIP. You can use the MD5SUM.EXE program included in pg264ui.zip to verify the MANIFEST (after using PGP to strip the signature).

Here is the MANIFEST for pg264ui.zip

Here is the MANIFEST for pg264uis.zip

This version of PGP has not been approved by MIT, Network Associates, or Phil Zimmerman. Please do NOT send any questions or bug reports about this version to either pgp-bugs at MIT, to Network Associates, or directly to Phil, but rather to me,

Steve Crompton <100645.1716@CompuServe.COM>
London, 9th May 1998

Image pgplock.gif used with permission from ORA