Summary

This project brought to life Elliptic Curve Cryptography support in OpenPGP as an end-user feature. Users can simply select an ECC key generation option in

   gpg2 --gen-key 

and then use the generated public key as they normally would use any other public key, as shown here.

The implementation follows the ECC in OpenPGP RFC6637, an IETF standards track specification.

The main goals of this project are:

• adoption of ECC in OpenPGP,
• NSA Suite B compliance at the AES 256 bit strength (equivalent to TOP SECRET level).

Sample Keys and messages are available.

See the single changeset r15 for what does it take to implement ECDSA and ECDH public key support in GnuPG. That's all the changes. You can browse the source at gpg2ecc.

The ECC support accomplished in this project was successfully merged into mainline GnuPG v.2 source tree in Feb 2011. We look forward to see these GnuPG changes propagate into a public release so that they are available in end-user packages.

The latest GnuPG release with ECC support is referenced bellow:

The nuild instructions can be found here and will work for either gnupg.org source tree or this project's source tree (that's how these binaries are built).

There are other projects, such as Zfone and pgcrypto (a crypto module for PostgresSQL), that follow the ECC in OpenPGP RFC6637. What do these projects find useful in ECC in general and the specification in particular?

The general benefits offered to users by this project are:

• smaller keys
• smaller messages
• stronger information protection than with currently popular RSA 2048 bit keys
• regulatory compliance
• access to larger universe of devices and environments that can use public key cryptography, such as mobile VoIP applications
• "plan B" to switch to in case of a breakthrough in attacks on traditional public key crypto field.

Ancestry

The following modules from the GnuPG v.2 set are maintained under source control as the base for ECC changes:

Interoperability

For interoperability with another product from independent code base you can use Symantec PGP Command Line version 10.2 and above. Release notes are posted here, which include ECC support in the New Features section (or you can navigate to this page through support page, then click on PGP Command Line on this support page). Trialware is available here.