Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!) • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#41

Post by spydum » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:00 PM UTC

dvdkhlng wrote: post #33

yuvadam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, this service should never be used for any serious real-life usage. But this is a _vanity_ key service, and there are legitimate uses for such keys where no harm can be done. I'm mainly interested in raising awareness to GnuPG and get more people using it - I also organize CryptoParties [1] in my area, exactly for this purpose. [1] - https://cryptoparty.in/

Is there a technical way to implement a service like that in a non-compromising way? I.e. user sends you his public key, you brute-force some nonce value, until the key's ID is "nice"? Non-native speaker here, I didn't even know what "vanity" means, just ignored it as noise-word :) Well, after looking it up, I still am not sure that I understand what it means :).

vanity base word is vane; or to be so focused on how pretty or appealling you are to others. often used when talking about asthetically pleasing names when talking about tech stuff (vanity hostnames for example.. dns names which are excessively showy, this used to be common on IRC to look "cool").

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#42

Post by Nanzikambe » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:07 PM UTC

60%? Given that you're using BTC the costs involved here are minimal, considering that there's no practical use for these keys where's the value justifying your 40%?

I'd invite folks reading this to donate directly to https://www.gnupg.org/donate/ and ensure 100% of your charity reaches the folks & help them attain their funding goal + keep one of the most essential tools under active development.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#43

Post by Nanzikambe » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:09 PM UTC

yuvadam wrote: post #16

teamhappy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about asking for over $10.000 (I'm bad at counting) for generated keys while GPG is desperately looking for donors? How do you feel about the ethics of your project in general? It looks a lot like domain parking to me.

You know what? You're absolutely right. I'll happily donate 60% of the profits from the service to GnuPG. Let's use this opportunity to fund GnuPG. You buying? :)

No I shall not, donated 100% directly to gnupg

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#44

Post by yuvadam » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

Nanzikambe wrote: post #42

60%? Given that you're using BTC the costs involved here are minimal, considering that there's no practical use for these keys where's the value justifying your 40%? I'd invite folks reading this to donate directly to https://www.gnupg.org/donate/ and ensure 100% of your charity reaches the folks & help them attain their funding goal + keep one of the most essential tools under active development.

Please, by all means donate 100% to GnuPG! That's the best possible outcome from this project.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#45

Post by yuvadam » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:12 PM UTC

spork1 wrote: post #38

Now this is retarded beyond repair. So, the idea is I'll pay money for someone to know my secret key? Whats next, vanity passwords? EDIT: reading the comments from the author yuvadam below, its obvious we are being trolled EDIT2: now i'm getting scared. i wouldn't want software from this guy near my machines https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?SeB=m&K=yuvadm

Thank you for pointing to the AUR, another great example of where you should never trust the maintainer blindly and _ALWAYS_ inspect the PKGBUILD yourself before installing.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#46

Post by yuvadam » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:14 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #37

yuvadam wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? You're absolutely right. I'll happily donate 60% of the profits from the service to GnuPG. Let's use this opportunity to fund GnuPG. You buying? :)

I'd rather donate 100% to GnuPG and not get an insecure vanity key.

Awesome, go donate to GnuPG! :)

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#47

Post by corobo » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

Joona wrote: post #35

aw3c2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is time to move on, Opera 12 is not supported anymore and bound to be insecure sooner than later. This problem will be a cipher issue.

It is, but I can't be bothered to try making Chrome or Firefox match my needs, if they even can.

Ok so you get Secure connection: fatal error (40) from server until you can be bothered

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#48

Post by mike-cardwell » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 2:07 PM UTC

"60% of all profits from this fun project go directly to fund GnuPG! You can also directly donate to a very important cause."

I severely doubt the guy who develops GnuPG (Werner Koch) would approve of this.

[edit] This is the worse thing I've ever seen on Hacker News.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#49

Post by toothbrush » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 2:15 PM UTC

mike-cardwell wrote: post #48

"60% of all profits from this fun project go directly to fund GnuPG! You can also directly donate to a very important cause." I severely doubt the guy who develops GnuPG (Werner Koch) would approve of this. [edit] This is the worse thing I've ever seen on Hacker News.

Yeah, how the hell did this get 20 points?

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#50

Post by mike-cardwell » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

dvdkhlng wrote: post #33

yuvadam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, this service should never be used for any serious real-life usage. But this is a _vanity_ key service, and there are legitimate uses for such keys where no harm can be done. I'm mainly interested in raising awareness to GnuPG and get more people using it - I also organize CryptoParties [1] in my area, exactly for this purpose. [1] - https://cryptoparty.in/

Is there a technical way to implement a service like that in a non-compromising way? I.e. user sends you his public key, you brute-force some nonce value, until the key's ID is "nice"? Non-native speaker here, I didn't even know what "vanity" means, just ignored it as noise-word :) Well, after looking it up, I still am not sure that I understand what it means :).

> Is there a technical way to implement a service like that in a non-compromising way? I.e. user sends you his public key, you brute-force some nonce value, until the key's ID is "nice"?

No. That is not possible.