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Official Keybase extension for Chrome

keybase.io

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Re: Official Keybase extension for Chrome

#21

Post by shazow »

SquareWheel wrote: post #20

Gave it a try. I like deeper integration with social services, but I'm not too excited that it's primarily just a shortcut to the app's chat feature (which I don't really use, honestly). I was hoping that it would let me send signed/encrypted tweets, or Gmail messages right on the page. Is that within the scope of the project, or is everything meant to happen from within the app?

Publishing encrypted tweets wouldn't work too well with the character limit and all, unless I suppose we use images and OCR[0].

For things like encrypting emails inline, we could explore it but I'm not convinced it's a good use case: To get all the benefits of Keybase (identity verification, key/device provisioning, improved encryption over PGP), the recipients would also need to have Keybase installed which means you could just use Keybase Chat instead.

[0] https://twitter.com/shazow/status/605748307688890368, https://github.com/Lukasa/entweet

Re: Official Keybase extension for Chrome

#22

Post by shazow »

pishpash wrote: post #11

Any thoughts on Keybase's part on getting into the password management space? Seems like the infrastructure is all there.

Before we settled on building a browser extension, my first proposal was actually to build a password manager on top of Keybase. It's a very exciting idea, but also the scope is pretty huge.

Right now the team is focused to get the Keybase platform to a place where even third-party developers could build things like password managers on top of it while getting the benefit of all of the things that make Keybase special.

Re: Official Keybase extension for Chrome

#23

Post by shazow »

gaxun wrote: post #7

I've been trying out this extension for a few days. What I would really like to see from this extension is a 1-click way to sign any message I'm writing, anywhere on the internet. Along with that would be the ability to verify that a keybase signature found in the wild belongs to a particular keybase user. Then I can initiate out-of-band discussions with the author of a comment on someone's blog, not just with a Redd…

I like the idea of (semi?)automagically decrypting/verifying content on the web. It's on the list of ideas to explore, but not sure how soon. :)

If you have more specific use cases in mind, I'd love to hear them.

Re: Official Keybase extension for Chrome

#27

Post by joshpadnick »

graphememes wrote: post #9

Stopped using Keybase after installing the windows graphical interface and it became increasingly intrusive to my daily workflow. I only login to keybase to obtain secrets from co-workers. If you don't login to keybase, quitting the interface on windows is extremely annoying and embedded deep in a custom right click interface. Then, once it has been quit, after some time it will randomly start again asking you to sig…

I'm a big fan of Keybase overall, but I share the annoyance of intrusive notifications. I don't really need to see a popup window of all users that pertain to my keybasefs folder every time I access it. Also, I've noticed keybasefs can be quite slow sometimes.

But these are minor annoyances in the context of a great product.

Re: Official Keybase extension for Chrome

#28

Post by mmanfrin »

graphememes wrote: post #9

Stopped using Keybase after installing the windows graphical interface and it became increasingly intrusive to my daily workflow. I only login to keybase to obtain secrets from co-workers. If you don't login to keybase, quitting the interface on windows is extremely annoying and embedded deep in a custom right click interface. Then, once it has been quit, after some time it will randomly start again asking you to sig…

Agreed. I misplaced my key for a bit, and it would prompt me for my password randomly after I clicked 'cancel'. Like, half hour later, prompt again. Adding on to that, you can't right click the taskbar icon to quit, you have to open it up, and go through a bespoke menu to exit.

That on top of the general sluggishness and bugs (kept telling me that HN could not be verified even though it had, and was according to the website.

It just feels so sloppy :/

Re: Official Keybase extension for Chrome

#29

Post by SquareWheel »

shazow wrote: post #21
SquareWheel wrote: post #20

Gave it a try. I like deeper integration with social services, but I'm not too excited that it's primarily just a shortcut to the app's chat feature (which I don't really use, honestly). I was hoping that it would let me send signed/encrypted tweets, or Gmail messages right on the page. Is that within the scope of the project, or is everything meant to happen from within the app?

Publishing encrypted tweets wouldn't work too well with the character limit and all, unless I suppose we use images and OCR[0]. For things like encrypting emails inline, we could explore it but I'm not convinced it's a good use case: To get all the benefits of Keybase (identity verification, key/device provisioning, improved encryption over PGP), the recipients would also need to have Keybase installed which means yo…

Fair point on tweet length. I hadn't considered that. Do Direct Messages have a character limit? I'm unsure.

For Gmail I think it could still make sense for those who have a Keybase account/key, but haven't yet downloaded the app (this was me for a while).

Just as an example, I have a work contact who I am often exchanging passwords with. We use Proton Mail for these, and Gmail for everything else. Saying "I sent you X on proton" is a lot more cumbersome than "here's an encrypted message", and being able to decode it inline.

We could use Keybase's webapp, but it still requires going to an external site to encrypt/decrypt messages. So it's not a big enough draw to change our workflow yet.

I understand the argument that Keybase Chat has more built in benefits, but sometimes you just prefer email to live chat. It's also an easier sell to download a Chrome extension once, than download an app and run it 24/7.

Admittedly that's just my use-case. I like to think of Keybase as easily accessible PGP functionality, so that's where I'm most interested in seeing it grow.

I know Google's working on the problem I described with their end-to-end extension[1], but it's been years in development so who's to say when it'll be ready.

Regardless, I think the product is great. Looking forward to seeing what you guys put out in the future.

[1] https://github.com/google/end-to-end

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