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Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

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Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#31

Post by unhammer »

ijlx wrote: post #22
timetosleep wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just considering the fact after 10-15 yrs would it be possible to still read those files? I use it (gnupg) for some of the data in my org files. It's just long term use, I'm concerned about.

If your concern is in the long term, wouldn't you want to put your trust in the most mature and long lasting project today (i.e. gpg)? Nobody can see the future, but given that gpg is open source and has been actively developed for over 20 years I feel comfortable trusting it to continue to exist.

That phenomenon has a name and a Wikipedia page (probably called "X's Law") but I forget what it's called. But the point is: the longer something has been around, the longer you can expect it to be around (given that you know nothing else about it). Cf. the age of a mountain vs an individual butterfly and your prediction of how long you expect it to be around for.

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#33

Post by stingraycharles »

eindiran wrote: post #30
olivierestsage wrote: post #5

A good place to ask questions like this is the (very friendly) Emacs subreddit.[1] [1] https://reddit.com/r/emacs

The problem with everyone having moved from forums over to subreddits is that in order to interact with the community/ask qiuestions/whatever, you need to have a Reddit account and deal with Reddit's dark patterns, data collection and general disrespect for their users.

Compared to the current status quo of the likes such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google, I think Reddit is relatively mild.

Also, keep in mind that HN is actually fairly similar a forum, and with that in mind, it’s very reasonable to point them into the direction of Reddit.

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#34

Post by philsnow »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #29
qbasic_forever wrote: post #23

Why not keep the notes in a VeraCrypt/TrueCrypt drive/partition? You can sidestep all the gpg complexity, and you get a little better protection since note filenames won't even be visible (and if you're really paranoid you can entirely obfuscate and hide the encrypted drive in unused partition space). Or just tick on the full disk encryption option in your OS (assuming it's a modern one like Win 10, recent Ubuntu, et…

That is often good, but it does leave mounted volumes accessible to other programs, where GPG files can be decrypted only inside EMACS. Whether this matters depends on your threat model.

> GPG files can be decrypted only inside EMACS

To get this you have to sacrifice the convenience of using gpg-agent, though, right? Otherwise any other program that can open your gpg agent socket can use your gpg keys.

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#35

Post by forgotmypw17 »

GPG-PGP works well,

has tooling on pretty much every platform,

is a mature, well-established product.

The complicated features are optional.

Using something like age, with one reference implementation in Go, not supported by most languages, nor time-tested, is just asking for trouble, like surprise exploits or bitrot making your data unusable.

I am perplexed by the frequency of "PGP/GPG is old, let's replace it with something new and untested" posts on HN...

In software development, OLD is GOOD.

(As a side note, I don't think Debian has been at the forefront of rational decisionmaking for a while, so I wouldn't watch them too closely.)

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#36

Post by aborsy »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #35

GPG-PGP works well, has tooling on pretty much every platform, is a mature, well-established product. The complicated features are optional. Using something like age, with one reference implementation in Go, not supported by most languages, nor time-tested, is just asking for trouble, like surprise exploits or bitrot making your data unusable. I am perplexed by the frequency of "PGP/GPG is old, let's replace it with…

Yeah, it’s weird. And it always comes from the same couple of people, with that one obscure hand-wavy blog post.

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#37

Post by allarm »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #23

Why not keep the notes in a VeraCrypt/TrueCrypt drive/partition? You can sidestep all the gpg complexity, and you get a little better protection since note filenames won't even be visible (and if you're really paranoid you can entirely obfuscate and hide the encrypted drive in unused partition space). Or just tick on the full disk encryption option in your OS (assuming it's a modern one like Win 10, recent Ubuntu, et…

> Why not keep the notes in a VeraCrypt/TrueCrypt drive/partition?

Because in this case you have to backup the whole encrypted disk, instead of syncing a couple of encrypted files. Also, setting up gpg in Emacs is very easy task. I am using selective encryption of orgmode entries with a specific tag, this case is covered in documentation.

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#38

Post by vats »

unhammer wrote: post #31
ijlx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your concern is in the long term, wouldn't you want to put your trust in the most mature and long lasting project today (i.e. gpg)? Nobody can see the future, but given that gpg is open source and has been actively developed for over 20 years I feel comfortable trusting it to continue to exist.

That phenomenon has a name and a Wikipedia page (probably called "X's Law") but I forget what it's called. But the point is: the longer something has been around, the longer you can expect it to be around (given that you know nothing else about it). Cf. the age of a mountain vs an individual butterfly and your prediction of how long you expect it to be around for.

It's called Lindy Effect. It is applicable to some non-perishable things, where mortality rate decreases with time.

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#39

Post by cpach »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #29
qbasic_forever wrote: post #23

Why not keep the notes in a VeraCrypt/TrueCrypt drive/partition? You can sidestep all the gpg complexity, and you get a little better protection since note filenames won't even be visible (and if you're really paranoid you can entirely obfuscate and hide the encrypted drive in unused partition space). Or just tick on the full disk encryption option in your OS (assuming it's a modern one like Win 10, recent Ubuntu, et…

That is often good, but it does leave mounted volumes accessible to other programs, where GPG files can be decrypted only inside EMACS. Whether this matters depends on your threat model.

If you can’t trust the applications running on your system, then I’d say it’s game over.

If you need to worry about that kind of thing then you need some kind of workload isolation. One way to solve that is Qubes OS.

Here are some other FOSS alternatives: https://fly.io/blog/sandboxing-and-workload-isolation/

Re: Ask HN: In Emacs, is there an alternative to GPG encryption in Org Mode?

#40

Post by exikyut »

dalai wrote: post #8
exikyut wrote: post #6

Orthogonal question: where can I learn more about Debian abandoning GPG?

I was also looking for this, I guess here: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Apt/Spec/AptSign I doubt this will happen any time soon.

Ah, thanks for reply, and for the info. Just noticed now, woops.
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