GnuPG Defaults

[David Shaw]

On Sep 17, 2008, at 12:38 AM, Kevin Hilton wrote:

> I'm sure its probably contained in one of the RFC's, however when was
> DSA signing keys and ElGamal Encryption keys, along with the AES-256
> cipher and SHA1 digest chosen as the defaults for key generation?  Any
> particular reasons these were chosen as the defaults?  (This is not an
> attempt to lure people into a discussion of which is better than
> that).  I'm just curious why these were chosen as defaults.

There were many reasons behind it, but a significant one was that DSA  
signing keys and Elgamal encryption keys were not patented.  It is  
difficult to establish a new protocol if a major chunk of it is  
patented.  SHA1 was the state of the art hash then, and an obvious  
choice.
AES256 is not the default cipher.  3DES is.

David