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Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

arxiv.org

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Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#81

Post by acqq »

late2part wrote: post #75
acqq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice, I heard someone say that the biggest improvement in people’s privacy has been use of Gmail. In practice, until Snowden happened, NSA was able to access all the Google's internal data as Google replicated in plaintext its whole datacenters through the links snooped by the NSA or the GCHQ. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/30/nsa_smile...

Correct. And now they encrypt all the inter-data center traffic. Question: Is that done on an end-to-end basis? Or do they encrypt the links between data centers? I want to encrypt a 10g ethernet and all the solutions look quite expensive. Has anyone done high speed encryption (i.e. 10gbps/1500 byte packets) with strongswan or similar?

I believe end to end is simpler when you control all the ends and can tweak all the software, like they do. There's also an advantage of having very fast processors already provided.

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#82

Post by kobayashi »

rogeryu wrote: post #67
jordanpg wrote: post #60

I see two major barriers to mass adoption of any crypto system that requires a UI. 1. Abstraction. For the non-expert, the only metaphor that works for PKI is that of physical security. The concept of a "key" as a series of characters or a file that must be protected must be replaced by an abstraction that allows users to protect it in the same way they understand how to protect a key or a wallet. So long as the "key…

I've been using GPG since a while now, to sign my outgoing mail. I don't encrypt it as I don't know anyone who uses GPG. I'm still happy to use it, to get used to it, and to see alternative uses. Signing is in my view a big improvement, to make sure nobody has messed with the messages. I always use HTML, so the receiver gets an attachment with the signing hash in it, and no strange text in the mail. I use a signature…

The idea of including a link to your public key and a link the wiki on PGP is great! I'm going to do this as well. Would you mind showing me how you link to the above mentioned?

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#83

Post by nailer »

mikeytown2 wrote: post #78

If someone could use your public SSH from say Github and send you a private message that would be great. From my understanding that is not possible. You need to generate and exchange PGP keys before, a major UX issue. Allow SSH public keys to be used and we'll be a lot closer to fixing the secure email issue.

Also Facebook (which has an official onion site to help if your internet connection is suspect) has GPG as a standard part of all user profiles. This would be a much more normal person directory than GitHub or MIT ( yes someone on HN suggested MIT as a mainstream PGP directory)

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#84

Post by nailer »

Decade wrote: post #46

Backwards compatibility is the killer. The whole design of PGP is to be the envelope to make email private, versus the plaintext postcard that everybody can read. It works with existing servers and existing mail clients. The biggest Snowden revelation is the importance of metadata. Just knowing whom you talk to, when, is frequently enough to compromise the parties involved. You might be doing something legal now, but…

Anyone on HN know what Signal does for envelope encryption? AFAICT it's the only crypto app that's OSS and still cares about usability.

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#85

Post by luvz2code »

mbrock wrote: post #43
lisper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of this? https://github.com/Spark-Innovations/SC4

I just tried it and it seems like a pretty good start! It doesn't seem to have launched publically yet but I hope they will have a landing page with utterly clear copy in a large font written with the mindset that for example this sentence "Once you have entered your email address, SC4 will automatically provision you with a set of random keys." is terrifyingly incomprehensible gobbledygook. ...actually I might be co…

Keys are stored in local browser storage. How does this work when browser cache is cleared?

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#86

Post by fukusa »

lordofmoria wrote: post #74

PGP does have a legitimate use case, namely Edward Snowden: he's technical, the NSA is his main threat vector, and it makes sense for him to spend lots of time reasoning about the web of trust, signing keys, double-checking fingerprints, and creating 12-minute explainer-videos for people he needs to communicate with (for reference: https://vimeo.com/56881481 ). Here's the problem: not everyone needs the stringent enc…

Apple is committed to destroy Google, not to protect user privacy.

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#87

Post by nickpsecurity »

bhickey wrote: post #48
bluegate010 wrote: post #10

Hey HN, I'm one of the authors on this paper. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Given the usability and technical problems with PGP, do you think it's worth saving?

It's one of only 2 or 3 techs mentioned in Snowden leaks as capable of blocking NSA. GPG specifically. That's enough reason to build on and around it until we have a usable solution just as strong.

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#88

Post by bruo »

lmm wrote: post #28
stuaxo wrote: post #3

This is something that the UX people of gnome could actually be useful for..

But they've made gnome worse, not better.

Worse for some people and better for other. My mother (58) and my grand mother (82) love how easily is to do what they usually do contrasted to the windows 8 experience.

I don't know if that is a common case or not, but at least it's not a definitive "worse" or "good". And for me, it's great as I never got a call to ask me where is something anymore.

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#89

Post by Perceptes »

makmanalp wrote: post #23

I think it's easy to pick on a weak example, but much progress has been made since the original "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt". A recent example: Textsecure / Signal has been very, very smooth for me and I doubt it'd be much more difficult for laypeople either: https://whispersystems.org/

Although, like mentioned in above comments, Signal does not hide metadata, which can be as valuable to attackers as the contents of the messages themselves.

Also, in terms of adoption, it's still hard when everyone has phones that use iMessage or SMS by default. iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, but not compatible with Signal, and Android has no equivalent baked in. Using Signal requires two extra steps for the user 1) downloading/installing Signal 2) knowing about it and caring enough to use it in the first place.

Re: Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client

#90

Post by MichaelGG »

Decade wrote: post #46

Backwards compatibility is the killer. The whole design of PGP is to be the envelope to make email private, versus the plaintext postcard that everybody can read. It works with existing servers and existing mail clients. The biggest Snowden revelation is the importance of metadata. Just knowing whom you talk to, when, is frequently enough to compromise the parties involved. You might be doing something legal now, but…

Dark Mail turned out to be a joke. Apart from the silly fields like "political party", the fundamental security model's broken. It has essentially zero benefits of "just use Gmail". The suggested security level delegates security to the receiver's mail server. Basically if we just had a " require TLS with verified cert for SMTP" option, that'd do most of what Dark Mail does.

In fact, big companies already so this. When LM talks to the DOD over SMTP, you can bet they have mandatory TLS. Exchange offers this out of the box.

DM offers higher capabilities with no usability benefits over PGP or whatever.

Disclaimer: Since the beginning, I've said the DMA had a zero chance of success. The problem isn't solvable.

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