Werner Koch

Werner Koch
Koch in 2015
Born (1961-07-11) July 11, 1961 (age 63)
Düsseldorf, Germany
OccupationSoftware developer
Known forGNU Privacy Guard
Websitewerner.eifelkommune.de

Werner Koch (born July 11, 1961) is a German free software developer.[1] He is best known as the principal author of the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG).[2] He was also Head of Office and German Vice-Chancellor of the Free Software Foundation Europe. He is the winner of Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 2015 for founding GnuPG.[3]

Journalists and security professionals rely on GnuPG, and Edward Snowden used it to evade monitoring whilst he leaked classified information from the U.S. National Security Agency.[4]

  1. ^ Wayner, Peter (November 19, 1999). "Germany Awards Grant for Encryption". The New York Times. Retrieved February 6, 2015.
  2. ^ Angwin, Julia (February 5, 2015). "The World's Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke". ProPublica. Retrieved February 6, 2015.
  3. ^ Library Freedom Project and Werner Koch are 2015 Free Software Awards winners FSF
  4. ^ Goodin, Dan (February 6, 2015). "Once-starving GnuPG crypto project gets a windfall. Now comes the hard part". Ars Technica. Condé Nast. Retrieved July 28, 2015.