GnuPG 2.3 Released With New Experimental Key Database Daemon, TPM 2.0 Daemon

Werner Koch announced the availability today of GnuPG 2.3 as the start of the (fairly stable, effectively production ready) test releases leading up to the GnuPG 2.4 stable update.

GnuPG 2.3 introduces a new experimental key database where the keys are stored in an SQLite database and allow for much faster key look-ups. This experimental key database can be enabled with the "use-keyboxd" option.

Also significant with GnuPG 2.3 is the new "tpm2d" daemon to allow physically binding keys to the local machine using Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM2) hardware. This new GnuPG 2.3 functionality allows leveraging of TPM 2.0 hardware for protecting private keys as a nice security improvement that can be enjoyed with most modern systems.

GnuPG 2.3 also delivers on a new gpg-card tool as a front-end for all types of supported smart cards, ed25519/cv25519 as default public key algorithms, support for v5 keys and signatures, basic ECC support for GPGSM, greater support for more card readers and tokens, and a variety of other enhancements throughout.

The list of changes and other details on GnuPG 2.3 can be found via the release announcement on GNU.org.