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21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

bugzilla.mozilla.org

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Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#111

Post by tptacek »

rendx wrote: post #89
skyfaller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that if you're building a professional secure environment, you don't need forward secrecy and it's ok to leak metadata? This doesn't make sense to me. The US gov't kills people based on metadata: https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/why-metadata-matters It's not possible to make email secure, the flaws are on the protocol level. To fix it, you would need to change it until it is no longer email.

Signal pumps all traffic across AWS infrastructure, where the simplest of all traffic analysis can deanonymize its users. Signal relies on phone numbers (for reasons), which again is not exactly the best "metadata" to carry around. If you look at the NSA material in the Snowden cache, it becomes clear that the whole "US kills based on metadata" is fed by piggybacking exactly on such systems, like deanonymization of s…

Ah, the "sufficiently sophisticated PGP usage", where everyone uses ephemeral email accounts for each message, subjects are encrypted, nobody can reply plaintext, and nothing runs over an infrastructure that can be traffic-analyzed. That "Deltachat" doesn't accomplish this is besides the point, of course.

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#112

Post by ifmpx »

XMPPwocky wrote: post #101
rendx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It has been long overdue that alternative OpenPGP implementations exist that try to address some of the peculiarities of GnuPG -- most of which are [still] there because its founder wants to preserve compatibility at all costs to support some of its long-term institutional users. And, yes, dealing with these peculiarities should not the responsibility of end users, but of further abstraction layers built on t…

What is a good non-email use case for the PGP format?

Any usecase forwhich no specialized solution already exists. Source code signatures and Apt/RPM packages are good examples of this.

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#113

Post by jrochkind1 »

ifmpx wrote: post #110
btilly wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OpenPGP community would do more for security if they listened to serious cryptographers and began recommending better solutions. See https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html for more on that. And it isn't hard to find lots and lots of cryptographers agreeing with the thesis.

People in this industry use OpenPGP because it's flexible and amendable to almost any usecase you can think of. "Better solutions" are usually indeed better but are also so specialized for their purpose to the point that they can't be easily used for any other purpose. OpenPGP is used to secure everything from simple messages and email to authenticating OS updates for most servers today. Should they use something mor…

What industry do you mean by "this industry"? Just... computing?

I didn't know OpenPGP was used to authenticate OS updates for most servers today. Can you give me a place to find out more about that; are you talking about a specific OS?

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#114

Post by ifmpx »

eVeechu7 wrote: post #54
lallysingh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do key exchange?

Video chat might be good for this?

With the rate that video-based deepfake projects are progressing, video/image-based verification likely won't remain useful for much longer.

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#115

Post by jrochkind1 »

mapgrep wrote: post #53
skyfaller wrote: post #50

I used to love PGP, but I now think encrypted email is a bad idea. https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted.... Better to use a protocol designed with encryption in mind, like Signal, to get forward secrecy, avoid leaking metadata, and have encryption always on by default. UPDATE: I have been reminded that PGP does not have to be used with email. I meant to say that I used to love using PGP with em…

Signal is great as an all in one solution if encrypted messaging is a hobby. It is also very good for mobile and encrypted occasional messages. If you try to actually build a secure environment within a group that tries to maximize security while getting real work done you find you want to be encrypted by default at least with each other. Signal is pretty suboptimal for heavy volumes of messages. If you and I have th…

> it is far better than having email default to clear text

You have your email set up to "default" to PGP? Can you say more about what you mean by that?

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#116

Post by jrochkind1 »

rendx wrote: post #89
skyfaller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that if you're building a professional secure environment, you don't need forward secrecy and it's ok to leak metadata? This doesn't make sense to me. The US gov't kills people based on metadata: https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/why-metadata-matters It's not possible to make email secure, the flaws are on the protocol level. To fix it, you would need to change it until it is no longer email.

Signal pumps all traffic across AWS infrastructure, where the simplest of all traffic analysis can deanonymize its users. Signal relies on phone numbers (for reasons), which again is not exactly the best "metadata" to carry around. If you look at the NSA material in the Snowden cache, it becomes clear that the whole "US kills based on metadata" is fed by piggybacking exactly on such systems, like deanonymization of s…

One can imagine all sorts of thing. Are you saying that you routinely send PGP email with Subject headers encrypted, using temporary mail addresses and pseudonyms? This is your routine email use, with a bunch of correspondents who do the same? Or, along with "random relay ordering on SMTP level", it's just something you're imagining? If you're saying the PGP use you imagine would be more secure than the Signal use that actually exists... I mean, I guess that's cool.

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#117

Post by cwyers »

rendx wrote: post #87
AlexCoventry wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moxie even openly argues against standards [x] and still calls himself an "anarchist". On the face of it, that sounds like exactly the position an anarchist would take...

If you believe in abolishing hierarchy and institutions where they have no legitimacy, _all_ you are left with is communication, community, and open standardization as practiced in anarchist bodies such as the IETF.

> anarchist bodies such as the IETF

That's an incredibly... unconventional read on the IETF.

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#119

Post by mikepurvis »

Longlius wrote: post #74
capableweb wrote: post #41

> For reasons associated with U.S. export restrictions, no cryptographic security of any kind is likely to be included in the original sources https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22687#c1 Creepiest thing with seeing this ticket (again?) is noticing that the first comment is about that is used to be illegal to write anything with cryptographic security in the US and sell/give it to the outside world. https://…

Any signatory to the Wassenaar Arrangement, which includes the entirety of North America, Europe (including Russia), Australia, India, and Pacific Asia (minus China) must consider cryptographic technologies to be munitions for the purposes of export. Now, these restrictions have been considerably loosened to the point that the export isn't really controlled, but international law still considers it a munition. The US…

I used to be involved in building and shipping research robots (from Canada) and I remember we ran into this a few times with a bog-standard industrial wifi radio that for some reason was under ITAR. Interestingly, the manufacturer of the radio was set up to ship it directly to our customer, we just couldn't integrate it into their robot and ship it from our facility. So they had to put on the radio themselves.

The whole thing seemed very silly and theatre-y to me.

Re: 21 years after the request OpenPGP support gets added to Thunderbird

#120

Post by ifmpx »

tptacek wrote: post #108
rendx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the single most common misconception around PGP, and it comes up every time: (Open)PGP is first and foremost a flexible packet format (and other specs), and GnuPG is more of a CLI "library" to interface with it -- all of it. You can build something that hides metadata, you can have forward secrecy, and encryption always-on by default with PGP (and GnuPG). You can use it for whatever trust model you want, neit…

This is a weird argument. By your logic, there's practically no cryptosystem PGP can't be; after all, it's an omnibus standard to which people routinely add extensions for new algorithms. Want a double ratchet? An elliptic curve triple handshake? The "building blocks" are all there, all you have to do is use PGP's "flexible packet format" to carry them.

This is an interesting interpretation of what he stated.

What I got from it is that the strength of PGP is in its flexibility and that it gains that flexibility from being standardized and open.

Of course you can extend PGP (or any protocol really) to include cryptographic handshakes, but that's besides the point.

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