PGG is an interface library between Emacs and various tools for secure communication. PGG also provides a simple user interface to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify MIME messages. This package is obsolete; for new code we recommend EasyPG instead. See EasyPG in EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual.
This file describes PGG 0.1, an Emacs interface to various PGP implementations.
Copyright © 2001, 2003–2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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PGG is an interface library between Emacs and various tools for secure communication. Even though Mailcrypt has similar feature, it does not deal with detached PGP messages, normally used in PGP/MIME infrastructure. This was the main reason why I wrote the new library.
Note that the PGG library is now obsolete, replaced by EasyPG. See EasyPG in EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual.
PGP/MIME is an application of MIME Object Security Services (RFC1848). The standard is documented in RFC2015.
PGG requires at least one implementation of privacy guard system. This document assumes that you have already obtained and installed them and that you are familiar with its basic functions.
By default, PGG uses GnuPG. If you are new to such a system, I recommend that you should look over the GNU Privacy Handbook (GPH) which is available at https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/.
When using GnuPG, we recommend the use of the gpg-agent
program, which is distributed with versions 2.0 and later of GnuPG.
This is a daemon to manage private keys independently from any
protocol, and provides the most secure way to input and cache your
passphrases (see Caching passphrase). By default, PGG will
attempt to use gpg-agent
if it is running. See Invoking
GPG-AGENT in Using the GNU Privacy Guard.
PGG also supports Pretty Good Privacy version 2 or version 5.
The toplevel interface of this library is quite simple, and only intended to use with public-key cryptographic operation.
To use PGG, evaluate following expression at the beginning of your application program.
(require 'pgg)
If you want to check existence of pgg.el at runtime, instead you can list autoload setting for desired functions as follows.
(autoload 'pgg-encrypt-region "pgg" "Encrypt the current region." t) (autoload 'pgg-encrypt-symmetric-region "pgg" "Encrypt the current region with symmetric algorithm." t) (autoload 'pgg-decrypt-region "pgg" "Decrypt the current region." t) (autoload 'pgg-sign-region "pgg" "Sign the current region." t) (autoload 'pgg-verify-region "pgg" "Verify the current region." t) (autoload 'pgg-insert-key "pgg" "Insert the ASCII armored public key." t) (autoload 'pgg-snarf-keys-region "pgg" "Import public keys in the current region." t)
At this time you can use some cryptographic commands. The behavior of
these commands relies on a fashion of invocation because they are also
intended to be used as library functions. In case you don’t have the
signer’s public key, for example, the function pgg-verify-region
fails immediately, but if the function had been called interactively, it
would ask you to retrieve the signer’s public key from the server.
Encrypt the current region between start and end for recipients. When the function were called interactively, you would be asked about the recipients.
If encryption is successful, it replaces the current region contents (in the accessible portion) with the resulting data.
If optional argument sign is non-nil
, the function is
request to do a combined sign and encrypt. This currently is
confirmed to work with GnuPG, but might not work with PGP or PGP5.
If optional passphrase is nil
, the passphrase will be
obtained from the passphrase cache or user.
Encrypt the current region between start and end using a symmetric cipher. After invocation you are asked for a passphrase.
If optional passphrase is nil
, the passphrase will be
obtained from the passphrase cache or user.
symmetric-cipher encryption is currently only implemented for GnuPG.
Decrypt the current region between start and end. If decryption is successful, it replaces the current region contents (in the accessible portion) with the resulting data.
If optional passphrase is nil
, the passphrase will be
obtained from the passphrase cache or user.
Make the signature from text between start and end. If the
optional third argument cleartext is non-nil
, or the
function is called interactively, it does not create a detached
signature. In such a case, it replaces the current region contents (in
the accessible portion) with the resulting data.
If optional passphrase is nil
, the passphrase will be
obtained from the passphrase cache or user.
Verify the current region between start and end. If the
optional third argument signature is non-nil
, it is treated
as the detached signature file of the current region.
If the optional 4th argument fetch is non-nil
, or the
function is called interactively, we attempt to fetch the signer’s
public key from the key server.
Retrieve the user’s public key and insert it as ASCII-armored format.
Collect public keys in the current region between start and end, and add them into the user’s keyring.
Since PGP has a long history and there are a number of PGP implementations available today, the function which each one has differs considerably. For example, if you are using GnuPG, you know you can select cipher algorithm from 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, and so on, but on the other hand the version 2 of PGP only supports IDEA.
Which implementation is used is controlled by the pgg-scheme
variable. If it is nil
(the default), the value of the
pgg-default-scheme
variable will be used instead.
Force specify the scheme of PGP implementation. The value can be set to
gpg
, pgp
, and pgp5
. The default is nil
.
The default scheme of PGP implementation. The value should be one of
gpg
, pgp
, and pgp5
. The default is gpg
.
When using GnuPG (gpg) as the PGP scheme, we recommend using a program
called gpg-agent
for entering and caching
passphrases1.
If non-nil
, attempt to use gpg-agent
whenever possible.
The default is t
. If gpg-agent
is not running, or GnuPG
is not the current PGP scheme, PGG’s own passphrase-caching mechanism
is used (see below).
To use gpg-agent
with PGG, you must first ensure that
gpg-agent
is running. For example, if you are running in the X
Window System, you can do this by putting the following line in your
.xsession file:
eval "$(gpg-agent --daemon)"
For more details on invoking gpg-agent
, See Invoking
GPG-AGENT in Using the GNU Privacy Guard.
Whenever you perform a PGG operation that requires a GnuPG passphrase,
GnuPG will contact gpg-agent
, which prompts you for the
passphrase. Furthermore, gpg-agent
“caches” the result, so
that subsequent uses will not require you to enter the passphrase
again. (This cache usually expires after a certain time has passed;
you can change this using the --default-cache-ttl
option when
invoking gpg-agent
.)
If you are running in a X Window System environment, gpg-agent
prompts for a passphrase by opening a graphical window. However, if
you are running Emacs on a text terminal, gpg-agent
has trouble
receiving input from the terminal, since it is being sent to Emacs.
One workaround for this problem is to run gpg-agent
on a
different terminal from Emacs, with the --keep-tty
option; this
tells gpg-agent
use its own terminal to prompt for passphrases.
When gpg-agent
is not being used, PGG prompts for a passphrase
through Emacs. It also has its own passphrase caching mechanism,
which is controlled by the variable pgg-cache-passphrase
(see
below).
There is a security risk in handling passphrases through PGG rather
than gpg-agent
. When you enter your passphrase into an Emacs
prompt, it is temporarily stored as a cleartext string in the memory
of the Emacs executable. If the executable memory is swapped to disk,
the root user can, in theory, extract the passphrase from the
swapfile. Furthermore, the swapfile containing the cleartext
passphrase might remain on the disk after the system is discarded or
stolen. gpg-agent
avoids this problem by using certain tricks,
such as memory locking, which have not been implemented in Emacs.
If non-nil
, store passphrases. The default value of this
variable is t
. If you are worried about security issues,
however, you could stop the caching of passphrases by setting this
variable to nil
.
Elapsed time for expiration in seconds.
If your passphrase contains non-ASCII characters, you might need to specify the coding system to be used to encode your passphrases, since GnuPG treats them as a byte sequence, not as a character sequence.
Coding system used to encode passphrase.
The PGP implementation is usually able to select the proper key to use for signing and decryption, but if you have more than one key, you may need to specify the key id to use.
User ID of your default identity. It defaults to the value returned by ‘(user-login-name)’. You can customize this variable.
User ID of the GnuPG default identity. It defaults to ‘nil’. This overrides ‘pgg-default-user-id’. You can customize this variable.
User ID of the PGP 2.x/6.x default identity. It defaults to ‘nil’. This overrides ‘pgg-default-user-id’. You can customize this variable.
User ID of the PGP 5.x default identity. It defaults to ‘nil’. This overrides ‘pgg-default-user-id’. You can customize this variable.
PGG introduces the notion of a "scheme of PGP implementation" (used interchangeably with "scheme" in this document). This term refers to a singleton object wrapped with the luna object system.
Since PGG was designed for accessing and developing PGP functionality, the architecture had to be designed not just for interoperability but also for extensibility. In this chapter we explore the architecture while finding out how to write the PGG back end.
A scheme must be initialized before it is used. It had better guarantee to keep only one instance of a scheme.
The following code is snipped out of pgg-gpg.el. Once an
instance of pgg-gpg
scheme is initialized, it’s stored to the
variable pgg-scheme-gpg-instance
and will be reused from now on.
(defvar pgg-scheme-gpg-instance nil) (defun pgg-make-scheme-gpg () (or pgg-scheme-gpg-instance (setq pgg-scheme-gpg-instance (luna-make-entity 'pgg-scheme-gpg))))
The name of the function must follow the
regulation—pgg-make-scheme-
follows the back end name.
In each back end, these methods must be present. The output of these methods is stored in special buffers (Getting output), so that these methods must tell the status of the execution.
Return keys associated with string. If the optional third
argument type is non-nil
, it searches from the secret
keyrings.
Encrypt the current region between start and end for
recipients. If sign is non-nil
, do a combined sign
and encrypt. If encryption is successful, it returns t
,
otherwise nil
.
Encrypt the current region between start and end using a
symmetric cipher and a passphrases. If encryption is successful, it
returns t
, otherwise nil
. This function is currently only
implemented for GnuPG.
Decrypt the current region between start and end. If
decryption is successful, it returns t
, otherwise nil
.
Make the signature from text between start and end. If the
optional third argument cleartext is non-nil
, it does not
create a detached signature. If signing is successful, it returns
t
, otherwise nil
.
Verify the current region between start and end. If the
optional third argument signature is non-nil
, it is treated
as the detached signature of the current region. If the signature is
successfully verified, it returns t
, otherwise nil
.
Retrieve the user’s public key and insert it as ASCII-armored format.
On success, it returns t
, otherwise nil
.
Collect public keys in the current region between start and
end, and add them into the user’s keyring.
On success, it returns t
, otherwise nil
.
The output of the back end methods (Back end methods) is stored in special buffers, so that these methods must tell the status of the execution.
The standard error output of the execution of the PGP command is stored here.
The standard output of the execution of the PGP command is stored here.
The rest of status information of the execution of the PGP command is stored here.
The format of OpenPGP messages is maintained in order to publish all necessary information needed to develop interoperable applications. The standard is documented in RFC 2440.
PGG has its own parser for the OpenPGP packets.
List the sequence of packets in string.
List the sequence of packets in the current region between start and end.
If non-nil
, don’t check the checksum of the packets.
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Actually, gpg-agent
does not cache
passphrases but private keys. On the other hand, from a user’s point
of view, this technical difference isn’t visible.