Re: gnugpg question

[Noah Salzman <nsalzman () ncircle com>]

GnuPG and PGP are not 100% compatible.  For instance, when you create a 
key in GnuPG it encrypts the private key with a symmetric cipher. 
However, the cipher it uses may not be available in PGP.  For instance, 
GnuPG may use Blowfish which is not available in PGP.

The password problems you are seeing can be caused by this since your 
password/phrase is what is used to unlock the symmetric cipher that 
protects your private key.

Yes, it is annoying.  The GnuPG people and the PGP (www.pgp.com) people 
have had differences in their products for years now and every day 
there is a new user that gets caught by these incompatibilities.  Sigh.

  --Noah--



On Friday, October 18, 2002, at 12:07 PM, Evil Monkey wrote:

> I've been playing around with PGP and have found something kooky.  I'm
> curious if y'all have seen the same thing and might be able to offer 
> some
> explaination:
>
> - I can create a key pair with the PGP tools for Windows.  I can use 
> this
> key pair to successfully encrypt and decrypt on the box I created it.  
> I can
> export this keypair, and import it into gnugpg on a slackware box and
> successfully use it to encrypt and decrypt things.
>
> - I can create a keypair with gnugpg on the slackware box.  I can use 
> this
> key pair to successfully encrypt and decrypt things on that box.  I can
> export the key pair and import it into the pgp tools on a windows box.
> However when I try to encrypt or decrypt with that keypair it barfs on 
> the
> passphrase.  With an older version of the pgp tools it claimed the
> passphrase was incorrect.  With the most current version it claims the
> passphrase doesn't exist and won't let me do a thing.  On the newest 
> version
> of pgp tools, if I check out the key's properties and attempt to 
> change the
> passphrase it says the passphrase I've entered is incorrect.
>
> Any ideas as to the cause of this?
>
> Pete