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Modern Alternatives to PGP

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Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#151

Post by kingofhdds »

lixtra wrote: post #128
tptacek wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed. Magic Wormhole implements a PAKE to individually encrypt and authenticate a secure channel without requiring any other root of trust. It's exceptionally easy to use and secure.

Magic Wormhole looks neat and I can imagine using it. But apparently it requires: - both parties to be online at the same time - have access to a secured channel to transfer the secret - Transfer a new autogenerated secret for each file transfer. PGP lets you: - verify the key once - re-use the key - the key be submitted through a public channel - the verification be done in a public (though tamper proof) channel or…

Also magic-wormhole relies on a hardcoded intermediary servers for which author gives no guarantees.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#152

Post by _wldu »

tptacek wrote: post #39
Quekid5 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OpenPGP considered 'legacy'? If so, why? I was under the impression that it's mostly that it's really hart to reliably support e.g. calling 'gnupg' (cmdline), gpgme (library), etc.? ISTR there was a company that's re-implementing the OpenPGP standard from scratch in a library-oriented-fashion, but for the life of me I can't remember their name... I don't disagree with the 'drop legacy' stance, btw, I'm just intere…

Yes, as the article says, it's a 1990s-style ultra-configurable do-everything design which, in practice, almost always gets deployed in a lowest-common-denominator set of constructions that are themselves mired in 1990s crypto. No modern cryptographic engineer looking at any problem PGP solves would design a system that looked like PGP. PGP used to make some sense as a simple at-rest storage format, but in the era of…

tptacek - What would you consider a good modern way to replace encrypting large text files to multiple PGP keys? That's my main automated use case for OpenPGP in Go. If there is a simpler, more modern way, I'd like to try it... thanks.

Edit: We do this, then push the files to a S3 bucket and users can get the files and decrypt them without having to deal with remembering/forgetting static passwords.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#153

Post by everybodyknows »

lower wrote: post #89
sowbug wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others if you don't personally have that memory but would like to understand it.

While this is a good movie, one should be aware that it does not reflect the reality in Eastern Germany all that well. It's not a documentary. In preparation for the film, the director asked Christoph Hein, an Eastern German writer, to describe the typical life of a writer in Eastern Germany (which is what the film is about). At the premiere, Hein's name was included in the opening credits, but he asked to have it re…

>he couldn't see his story in the film ...

Published comments, just last month. In German -- would any bilinguals care to summarize?

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/donnersmarck-hein-das-leb...

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#154

Post by mikegerwitz »

tptacek wrote: post #39
Quekid5 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OpenPGP considered 'legacy'? If so, why? I was under the impression that it's mostly that it's really hart to reliably support e.g. calling 'gnupg' (cmdline), gpgme (library), etc.? ISTR there was a company that's re-implementing the OpenPGP standard from scratch in a library-oriented-fashion, but for the life of me I can't remember their name... I don't disagree with the 'drop legacy' stance, btw, I'm just intere…

Yes, as the article says, it's a 1990s-style ultra-configurable do-everything design which, in practice, almost always gets deployed in a lowest-common-denominator set of constructions that are themselves mired in 1990s crypto. No modern cryptographic engineer looking at any problem PGP solves would design a system that looked like PGP. PGP used to make some sense as a simple at-rest storage format, but in the era of…

PGP is still widely deployed, whether you like it or not. "I don't like it" isn't a valid argument for considering something "legacy", when it works just fine for certain cases.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#155

Post by tptacek »

kingofhdds wrote: post #151
lixtra wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magic Wormhole looks neat and I can imagine using it. But apparently it requires: - both parties to be online at the same time - have access to a secured channel to transfer the secret - Transfer a new autogenerated secret for each file transfer. PGP lets you: - verify the key once - re-use the key - the key be submitted through a public channel - the verification be done in a public (though tamper proof) channel or…

Also magic-wormhole relies on a hardcoded intermediary servers for which author gives no guarantees.

You can simply run your own. The protocol doesn't rely on the servers for security.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#156

Post by tptacek »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #141
tptacek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_.

still, from a dev perspective it's not always clear what tool to use for the task. That's a lot of bike shedding for something that shouldn't be a problem in the first place: email or whatever communication system we will use in 20 years needs to have encryption baked in by default. Storing and sharing data safely need to be a first class feature of all OS and browsers.

What's the term of art for bikeshedding something so long that you give up and opt for a solution that is materially worse than all the bikeshedded options? Because that's what you're doing when you debate cryptography and give up and use OpenPGP.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#157

Post by klodolph »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #150
klodolph wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have misread my comment, since I never claimed it was not possible to use PGP without web of trust. I claimed that it was a pain in the ass.

Its a pain in the ass because nobody has created a user friendly UI for that, but in itself it is a powerful technique to establish trust.

PGP’s UI isn’t user friendly to begin with, in fact, it’s notoriously bad. But that’s not the point. You try to get PGP to verify a signature without importing the key into a keychain fist.

The purported benefits of web of trust are completely irrelevant, the problem is that PGP handcuffs you to the web of trust and web of trust is often unwanted. You have to reduce and simplify your trust to something that PGP understands. There is no reason on this earth that signature verification should require importing shit into a database.

The whole philosophy of “do one thing well” would be nice here. PGP never lets you do one thing, it makes you buy the whole banana.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#158

Post by tptacek »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #133
sdevlin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using "one-time-use combinations of three English words" is "fine" only if your definition of "fine" includes allowing someone with a minimal budget to find out the password in less than a year. Magic Wormhole uses a PAKE to establish a secure channel from a low-entropy shared secret.

I admit that I missed that part. My mistake, I apologise.

You might also acknowledge your faulty critique of systems that use XSalsa20.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#159

Post by tptacek »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #154
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as the article says, it's a 1990s-style ultra-configurable do-everything design which, in practice, almost always gets deployed in a lowest-common-denominator set of constructions that are themselves mired in 1990s crypto. No modern cryptographic engineer looking at any problem PGP solves would design a system that looked like PGP. PGP used to make some sense as a simple at-rest storage format, but in the era of…

PGP is still widely deployed, whether you like it or not. "I don't like it" isn't a valid argument for considering something "legacy", when it works just fine for certain cases.

"I don't like it" isn't my argument for OpenPGP being legacy, and there's nothing in this thread to suggest otherwise.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#160

Post by tptacek »

tyingq wrote: post #126
tptacek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"openssl enc" requires you to select from over 105 different cipher constructions, virtually all of which are terribly insecure.

Okay, so "gpg -c" is better than other commonly installed command line tools for encrypting a file with password?

PGP, which is something you have to explicitly install, is a badly flawed way to encrypt files; it has a poor password KDF and you should look at how it authenticates data.

Install something better.

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