Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm giving up on PGP

blog.filippo.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 350 posts

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#111

Post by ryukafalz »

the8472 wrote: post #98
psiconaut wrote: post #3

I find very interesting the point about the split between what WoT was supposed to be, in theory, and what little it represents, in practice, in terms of practices about key verification. It has been said many times that the lack of adoption of pgp in mail was due to the average user not being able to grasp the concepts behind the proper operation for key management, but the article points to common practices among "…

Is there anything that enables key exchange via smartphones? Ideally it should be as easy as a meatbag handshake. Basically, if you can swap contacts via NFC then the pgp keys should go along with it. It may have some theoretical weaknesses such as the exchange being MITMable if the users don't verify something on their screens, but I think having many more edges in the graph would make up for it since you might alre…

OpenKeychain does this, provided both users have it of course.

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#112

Post by [deleted] »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #105
JulianMorrison wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going with fundamentally flawed. Or perhaps more exactly, a solution for a non-problem. Things PGP can do: - Hide the contents of a message. But not the fact of a message nor who it's to. And it's only as hidden as a key that your recipient has to keep secret indefinitely. - Permanently be incriminating, since the message can be as easily opened a decade from now. - Prove you're you. Which is great for incriminat…

Add one more thing: stop the NSA per the Snowden leaks. Everything else in the leaks failed that test. Using a solution strong against the strongest attacker is worthwhile to people wondering how good various solutions really are. Far as a decade from now, that's probably all you need given the statute of limitations.

[deleted]

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#113

Post by lmm »

> Yeah, about that. I never ever ever successfully used the WoT to validate a public key.

If you ever installed a Debian package then you did. A long-term identity as "Bob Jones" might not be terribly useful - but that's not the kind of long-term identity we care about a lot in real life either. A long-term identity as "Debian release manager" or "Signatory on bank account xyz" or even "Wikileaks committee member" is a lot more important, and for those cases PGP becomes very useful.

> Then, there's the UX problem. Easy crippling mistakes. Messy keyserver listings from years ago. "I can't read this email on my phone". "Or on the laptop, I left the keys I never use on the other machine".

These are real problems. We should fix them. But we don't need a new crypto standard to do so! It never fails to amaze me how many people/organizations are like "I don't have the time/money/patience to write a high-quality OpenPGP libary (or a high-quality GPG frontend), but I'm perfectly placed to create a new cryptosystem from scratch."

> Your average adversary probably can't MitM Twitter DMs (which means you can use them to exchange fingerprints opportunistically, while still protecting your privacy). The Mossad will do Mossad things to your machine, whatever key you use.

This is pets vs cattle in the opposite direction. Can Mossad Mossad you personally? Yes, if you're a big enough target, but they can't Mossad everyone. Whereas the NSA can MitM key fingerprints exchanged via Twitter on an industrial scale.

> Mostly I'll use Signal or WhatsApp, which offer vastly better endpoint security on iOS, ephemerality, and smoother key rotation.

If you're using iOS you've already given up against state-level attackers. Anything actually encrypted (e.g. IRC with SSL) is more than adequate in that case. Most people don't need the jump up to PGP, sure. But it's important that the option is there for people that really do need it. It bears repeating that we know, from their complaints in leaked emails, that the NSA can't break PGP when used correctly. That's an extremely strong seal of approval for the most critical use cases for encryption.

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#114

Post by drzaiusapelord »

drdaeman wrote: post #106
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not S/MIME? Most clients support it, its stupid easy, and has had a lot of eyes on it considering its age. Constantly re-inventing email encryption seems to be the problem here. None of them really make this stuff any better. Key distribution is still going to be PITA, but sticking with a supported standard makes the most sense.

No one seem to want to touch anything that already exists. Never heard of anyone thinking of redesigning UI/UX for a typical MUA or browser's keystore (throwing in BTBV option or whatever), although I still believe that must be possible. Everyone's off with their own proprietary non-interoperable (occasionally, "open") standards. Also, _almost_ no client supports _any_ form of authentication and encryption on mobile,…

iPhone supports S/MIME out of the box. Android has 3rd party mail clients that do. Several desktop clients do, including Outlook.

Its not as dire as you make it to be. People just dont want the hassle and don't value their email privacy. Once they do value this, which they should considering all the breaches of late, then it'll catch on. I work with companies that have S/MIME internally for just this reason. Its completely feasible.

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#115

Post by j-conn »

ritonlajoie wrote: post #66

On a related thought, using a 'secure' (or so they say ?) email provider à là protonmail is just secure if you send your email to another protonmail user. Problem with services like that is they omit to tell their users that email is not E2E, and sending from protonmail to gmail will just disable the benefits of using protonmail. So yes, if you are trying to send encrypted email to a GMAIL user, your only way is to u…

When sending to a non-protonmail account, you have the option to encrypt the message contents-- recipient has to open a link and enter the password. I think decryption is done in the browser in that case too (not 100% sure tho)

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#116

Post by runn1ng »

I will add what I wrote on a different thread

PGP is used very heavily on online drug marketplaces. You really can't use Signal or WhatsApp there - leaking too much metadata - and even OTR is leaking too much data.

PGP is quite good for this, and people use it for encoding their communication.

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#117

Post by lmm »

jerf wrote: post #13
psiconaut wrote: post #3

I find very interesting the point about the split between what WoT was supposed to be, in theory, and what little it represents, in practice, in terms of practices about key verification. It has been said many times that the lack of adoption of pgp in mail was due to the average user not being able to grasp the concepts behind the proper operation for key management, but the article points to common practices among "…

"I wonder if pgp is fundamentally flawed, or we have a deep conceptual usability issue here." I think it's the key model that's fundamentally flawed rather than pgp itself, which I believe the author of the article is also asserting. In cryptography, it is often explained that despite the fact a one-time pad is guaranteed-secure (given various conditions I'm eliding), it is not practical in the vast majority of cases…

Innovative new ways of distributing PGP key fingerprints are to be welcomed. But why would you not keep using PGP for the part that it's good at?

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#118

Post by nothrabannosir »

lmm wrote: post #113

> Yeah, about that. I never ever ever successfully used the WoT to validate a public key. If you ever installed a Debian package then you did. A long-term identity as "Bob Jones" might not be terribly useful - but that's not the kind of long-term identity we care about a lot in real life either. A long-term identity as "Debian release manager" or "Signatory on bank account xyz" or even "Wikileaks committee member" is…

> If you're using iOS you've already given up against state-level attackers.

Wasn't the recent apple vs FBI debacle evidence to the contrary?

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#119

Post by orblivion »

How is the author so seriously involved in PGP and only receive two encrypted emails a year? I'm basically just a dude who uses PGP because it's cool and I get tens of them. You just need one friend who also thinks it's cool.

Re: I'm giving up on PGP

#120

Post by nickik »

stinkytaco wrote: post #97
nickik wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keybase has clearly moved away from PGP. They want to use Saltpack whenever possible, NaCl based encryption. They want to solve the problem of multiple devices and not having to share the private key between all of them. As far as I know they are working on a messaging app as well.

I admit my ignorance of saltpack and keybase's implementation of it, but don't they propose storing the key for you? That seems to create a trust issue, which is precisely what the author is complaining people don't pay attention to, trust. On the other hand, perhaps the argument for this would be a "trusted 3rd party" model (a la S/MIME).

Well, you can have your GPG Private Key online if you like, but thats not my point. The new system moves away from having any sort of master key.

Rather every device has a new key, and they all sign each other. You can add new devices without old proves being invalidated.

See: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-new-key-model and https://saltpack.org/

I would really like a solution using this stuff that is highly integrated with my mail client.

Post reply on HN