why do we need "modern" alternatives for something that works?
Modern Alternatives to PGP
111–120 of 261 posts
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe "gpg -c" remains a better idea than encrypted zip files and "openssl enc" due to better defaults/ciphers/kdf. The article mentions magic wormhole, but sometimes you need plain old symmetric file encryption with a password.
Yes, PGP is better than the Bass-o-matic ZIP cipher many implementations of ZIP use. PGP clears that very, very low bar.
I did mention "openssl enc" as well. Is there some other common bundled utility I missed?
Or it's not useful to compare what's at hand?
Not sure I'm getting the message behind the jab.
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#113A side issue, but: > It generates those passwords for you, and they're short, one-time-use combinations of three English words If an attacker knows the tool does this, doesn't this reduce the keyspace to crack to (number of words in an English dictionary)*3? Is that enough? Am I missing something? A very complete dictionary has around 170K words, let's generously assume the password generator is willing to use all of…
It is not multiplication, it is permutation (170k!). I don't know how big this number is, however it is pretty big. This technic even has a name: diceware [1]. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware
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Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not multiplication, it is permutation (170k!). I don't know how big this number is, however it is pretty big. This technic even has a name: diceware [1]. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware
It's around 2^52 keys, which is pretty bad.
Right, a 52-bit key would be terrible for symmetric encryption. But that's not what Wormhole does. It uses PAKE, which is an interactive protocol that allows two parties that both know a short password to securely come up with a longer key for symmetric encryption.
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you own a domain and have a webserver running ssl you can distribute your public key in a secure manner. What situations are you encountering in 2019 where you really need a distributed web of trust?
> If you own a domain and have a webserver running ssl you can distribute your public key in a secure manner. That means that I'd be trusting GUANG DONG CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY and every other CA not to issue a fraudulent certificate against my domain. I don't think that's very secure.
Use a CAA policy in your DNS to lock down the CAs that can issue for your domain, and then monitor for issued certificates with the certificate transparency logs.
In modern browsers, certificates are not trusted if they're not CT-logged, so it's impossible for a fraudulent one to exist without you knowing about it (unless it was issued before these requirements were put in place in ~April 2018, but once all of those have expired, it'll be a pretty solid system).
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#116As far as I can tell none of these "alternatives" implement what is at least for me the most interesting feature of PGP: web of trust and key servers. It would be really nice to see a modern take on this. > No one was sending you encrypted emails anyway I actually use PGP for e-mailing quite often, for instance: how am I supposed to report security issues without gpg? (please don't suggest Whatsapp...)
>how am I supposed to report security issues without gpg? I’ve never understood this obsession with using PGP to deliver security reports (even a lot of pen testing firms do it). We trust TLS to secure all sorts of remarkably sensitive data, why do we need to add an extra layer of encryption to security reports? It just seems like an unnecessary barrier to delivering the report to me, and the user experience is terri…
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Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#117So author offers to replace PGP for sending files with a piece of software which requires to send/say a password to your recipient? Oh yeah, that's smart, and very modern!
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Censorship seems to be coming from the left. I think it makes sense for everybody to maintain as much privacy from .gov as possible.
So...you are aware that "saying that makes you an asshole" and "you can't say that" are different things, yes?
Attacks on free speech in USA and Europe have nothing to do with offensive language and everything to do with control. Be careful what precedents you set and what things you celebrate. Pendulums swing.
Are you referring to this? I don't think anybody tried to censor her for this, even though it was incredibly offensive. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/tlaib-going-to-impeach-mo...
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#119> No one was sending you encrypted emails anyway Guess what! Since I moved to Germany (from the Netherlands), I noticed that people send a lot of encrypted mail. Not random Germans, sure, but where in the Netherlands the security and broader hacker community was hard to convince, in Germany it's quite widespread. My colleagues (security firm) and friendly security firms (when we collaborate) expect nothing less, and…
> I wonder what it's caused by and how we can encourage it Probably because many Germans have a relatively recent memory of the Stasi in the DDR.
That's nice and all, and I don't doubt it, but in this instance, that cultural memory is (ironically) leading Germans to use inferior cryptography, and isn't serving them well.
Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP
#120> The "modern alternative" is to use a much more specific and much less configurable solution to your problem. The problem is you're replacing one configurable, flexible thing, with N different specific solutions involving multiple obscure little utilities. Oops! How can this blogger not see that this isn't better. How about a modern alternative to git? Instead of one hydra with so many heads, why not use scp for tra…
Because it is better. You don't get sound cryptosystems from configurable, flexible things; flexibility is the mortal enemy of cryptographic soundness. That's how "this blogger" "not see" that this isn't better.
This isn't some fringe belief among hipster cryptography engineers (among which I'm sure George counts himself). You can read it straight out of _Cryptography Engineering_.