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do you know if gpg embeds a header in the cyphertext ? It always bothered me that openssl (for symmetric aes) puts "Salted_" as the first 7 bytes in every encrypted file, because it seems to nullify the "plausible deniability" defense and the "cyphertext should be indistinguishable from random data" tenet. Sure, having "Salted" doesn't prove that AES was run on the following bytes, but there's no plausible explanation as to what other program would do such a thing.


> do you know if gpg embeds a header in the cyphertext ?

    $ file /tmp/something.gpg 
    /tmp/something.gpg: GPG symmetrically encrypted data (AES cipher)
It has to, otherwise you'd have to know and use exactly the same options when decrypting. You could always strip it manually if you don't want this...




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