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Modern Alternatives to PGP

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Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#241

Post by eropple »

agumonkey wrote: post #145
eropple wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. So you think that libsodium is going to dry up and disappear from the internet in "5 years' time"? Bear in mind that its first GitHub import was in 2013 and that it is used, and supported, by lil' guys like...uh...lemme look at this..."Google". While it's drying up and disappearing, is it going to take with it things like rbnacl which both use it transitively, package it for their environments, and also have some…

Google is not necessarily forever

Yeah, and neither are any of us. The idea that we're just going to lose incredibly central open-source projects in five years--or, frankly, fifty--is bonkers and your objection is to the color of the bikeshed.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#242

Post by lixtra »

kingofhdds wrote: post #234
lixtra wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to parents nice talk[1] you can add a verify switch that lets you compare the signature of the actual key. So a public authenticated channel is enough. [1] https://youtu.be/oFrTqQw0_3c

I'm not sure we are on the same page here. Having control over a channel you use to pass your code, I can receive your secret file, I just need to be quicker than a legitimate recipient. How this '--verify' flag will help you then?

The assumption is that Alice recognizes the voice of Bob. If Eve manages to evasdrop on the call and sits in the middle or beats Bob to connect to the wormhole server then Alice will still see that the fingerprint that Bob dictates over the phone does not match the fingerprint of the key that her computer proposes to use for the file transfer. Alice will therefore abort the transmission.

With deep learning the voice may be not good enough nowadays. Still, you only need an authenticated - possibly public - channel, similar to pgp key exchange, where you can read the fingerprint over the phone.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#243

Post by jwr »

eropple wrote: post #100
jwr wrote: post #80

One starts looking at things differently as years pass. I've been working with computers for >25 years now, and I've learned that long-term thinking is important. Remember '.bz' files that were all the rage? Yeah. Bzip1, not '.bz2'. Good luck trying to read that. For my data, I will stick to things that have been around for a long time and that are likely to stay. Those fancy 'nacl/box' thingies? I'm willing to make…

Hm. So you think that libsodium is going to dry up and disappear from the internet in "5 years' time"? Bear in mind that its first GitHub import was in 2013 and that it is used, and supported, by lil' guys like...uh...lemme look at this..."Google". While it's drying up and disappearing, is it going to take with it things like rbnacl which both use it transitively, package it for their environments, and also have some…

> Hm. So you think that libsodium is going to dry up and disappear from the internet in "5 years' time"? Bear in mind that its first GitHub import was in 2013 and that it is used, and supported, by lil' guys like...uh...lemme look at this..."Google".

I didn't write about libsodium. I wrote about tools I can actually use to access my data — while writing my own utilities to decode my stuff is fun, it is not necessarily how I choose to spend my time. And the fact that something was written by HN celebrities doesn't change much — being revered in HN circles is not necessarily indicative of real-life performance and certainly not of software longevity :-)

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#244

Post by taeric »

Boulth wrote: post #239
taeric wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. If you are decrypting with a key, either you trust it or you don't. It works or doesn't. That is, why use a public key scheme, for private encryption? It is literally made to establish identity with someone else. Not yourself. Even if you sign things for personal use, that is just to confirm nothing was tampered with. Which, if it was encrypted with a key, is already guaranteed. Otherwise it wo…

The point is anyone can encrypt to your public key, thus, anyone could create a "backup". They won't be able to decrypt it, only you, but still having a backup that you think was created by you but wasn't can be problematic.

Why would you be taking backups created by someone else, of your things? As soon as you've done that, you are already trusting that entity with your items before they did the backup. Would it matter what any metadata is?

Consider, you are still in the game I was talking about. Did they encrypt using a secret you know (your public key) or not. If not, it doesn't decrypt. If so, it does. But you still know nothing about who they are. At all. Just that whoever it was used your public key to encrypt.

Unless you are trust a signature they provide. Note, specifically not your public key, because again, either that worked to decrypt or it didn't.

So, you are ultimately back to a web of trust. There is almost certainly no getting around that.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#245

Post by bored_12 »

The problem for me in these alternatives is how little they take into account the users. Teaching people to use GPG has been hard enough, and now, with his proposal, for everything they do, they have to learn a new tool. Want to encrypt a file? Please, find, install, configure this tool. Want to sign something? Please, find, install, configure this tool. And many of these modern tools does not seem to have a nice UI which users can use. If these are only tools to be run on a terminal, then 'non-tech' users will not use them. And what worries me is that many of this modern alternatives have not have had sufficient crypto analysis or analysis in general. GPG is not perfect; but at least it has had analysis.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#246

Post by eikenberry »

bogomipz wrote: post #210
heyjudy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also replaces ssh-agent. I also use monkeysphere to store SSH keys in GPG. It's a far better solution than ssh keys lying around requiring management.

Interesting, can you what are the benefits of using gpg-agent over ssh-agent for managing ssh keys?

Nothing other than not needing ssh agent so it saves resources by not needing 2 agents. The gpg-agent takes care of both.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#247

Post by pjmlp »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #161
pjmlp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone at the office sends encrypted emails when referring to sensitive data. It helps that encrypting emails is one button away on Outlook.

Are you referring to an Outlook PGP add-on or SMIME?

I am referring at out of the box support support, whatever that may be, as we are an MS Office shop regarding office tooling.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#248

Post by rakoo »

afiori wrote: post #214
e12e wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably old encryption/sign constructs used by pgp/gpg coupled with issues with serialization/de-serialization of data/cipher text?

you know what is worse than inferior cryptography? no cryptography. security is a human problem and people like me needs a well supported tool with lots of tutorial and plugins for almost every application and a manageable sets of quirks. I agree that the illusion of security has drawbacks, but so does using too many tools that you don't properly understand.

Actually inferior (aka broken) cryptography is worse than no cryptography, because it makes you feel safe when you should at least know you aren't.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#249

Post by klodolph »

bmn__ wrote: post #182
klodolph wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGP is downright user-hostile once you're not using web of trust. So it's true, that you don't have to use web of trust. But PGP goes out of its way to make your life hell. For example, let's say you have a key (as an ordinary file) and a signed message in hand. How do you check that this key has signed this message, using the gpg command-line tools? The problem with PGP is that it combines web of trust and the mecha…

> How do you check that this key has signed this message, using the gpg command-line tools? gpg2 --import pubkey.gpg gpg2 --verify-files a-message.asc

This imports a key into my keychain, maybe I don't want to import this key? It also doesn't tell me if the message was signed with the key I specified, I have to do that myself, maybe by looking closely at the output? Awful, 3/10.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#250

Post by nicky0 »

davidcollantes wrote: post #13
nicky0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Facebook's settings you can paste a PGP public key. Notification emails sent to you by Facebook will then be encrypted using that key.

Interesting! Thanks for the explanation.

Another useful feature is you can opt to have the same key publicly displayed on your Faceook profile page.
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