Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

philzimmermann.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 194 posts

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#11

Post by breput »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #5
breput wrote: post #3

PGP felt so subversive back in the day. Key signing parties[1] and porting the "international" version[2] to run on the Amiga. And the very real threat that the Clipper Chip[3] would lead to the outlawing of all other encryption methods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party [2] https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pgp263.features... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

The government thinks it still is.

PGP's biggest weakness was that it was too early. There was no normal user accessible software available. No regular person was going to establish the web of trust or use command line utilities.

So now we have easy, strong encryption and the keys are controlled by...someone. Definitely not the user, though.

Funny story - even Phil Zimmerman can't use PGP: https://twitter.com/josephbonneau/status/638772283713060864 So maybe it is just a hard problem.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#12

Post by breput »

dosman33 wrote: post #9
breput wrote: post #3

PGP felt so subversive back in the day. Key signing parties[1] and porting the "international" version[2] to run on the Amiga. And the very real threat that the Clipper Chip[3] would lead to the outlawing of all other encryption methods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party [2] https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pgp263.features... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

The sad thing is if the clipper chip was ubiquitous today that could have killed the ability for spammers to spoof numbers. Some days I can get a dozen robo calls, each with a different spoofed number. People that want non-backdoored crypto could still do so. I'm still blown away at how hard it is to get people to use any encryption, even people who work in infosec/etc. If nothing else, 2020 was a great year for the…

Robo calls should be filtered at the network level. The Clipper Chip would have done nothing to prevent this.

There is actually encryption technology[1] available that would solve this or at least make it traceable and blockable. But here we are.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN

Edit: Also the political situation at the time was that if Clipper was adopted, all other encryption technology would be outlawed. It was a very scary time.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#13

Post by tptacek »

j0e1 wrote: post #10

> But while technology infrastructures can persist for generations, laws and policies can change overnight. Once a communications infrastructure optimized for surveillance becomes entrenched, a shift in political conditions may lead to abuse of this new-found power. Political conditions may shift with the election of a new government, or perhaps more abruptly from the bombing of a federal building. Prescient.

I guess. Pretty much everyone was saying that back then.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#15

Post by paulryanrogers »

tptacek wrote: post #6
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the best arguments for using PGP is how long it's been around and is still in use, for two reasons: The encryption mechanisms have been tested many times by many people. And the tooling exists for just about platform and language.

The encryption mechanisms were tested, found wanting, and replaced in subsequent systems. PGP's installed base prevented them from keeping up. As a result, the constructions used in PGP today are essentially reviled by cryptography engineers.

Really? The fundamentals or the implementation?

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#16

Post by aborsy »

breput wrote: post #14

Matthew Green does a pretty good job picking apart PGP's issues, although he completely fails at suggesting alternatives and also completely ignores non-email use cases. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/08/13/whats-ma...

With attacks on encryption and privacy by governments and big companies, we need more tools such as PGP.

The user should hold the keys, not a government or company.

Technical aspects are generally secondary, and should improve, but we shouldn’t dismiss good approaches due to implementation details.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#17

Post by breput »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #4
rsyring wrote: post #2

Created 1991, updated 1999

I think one of the best arguments for using PGP is how long it's been around and is still in use, for two reasons: The encryption mechanisms have been tested many times by many people. And the tooling exists for just about platform and language.

This is pure snark and should be downvoted into oblivion, but by 2015 even Phil Zimmerman couldn't figure out the tooling:

"Sorry, but I cannot decrypt this message. I don't have a version of PGP that runs on any of my devices"

https://twitter.com/josephbonneau/status/638772283713060864

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#18

Post by breput »

aborsy wrote: post #16
breput wrote: post #14

Matthew Green does a pretty good job picking apart PGP's issues, although he completely fails at suggesting alternatives and also completely ignores non-email use cases. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/08/13/whats-ma...

With attacks on encryption and privacy by governments and big companies, we need more tools such as PGP. The user should hold the keys, not a government or company. Technical aspects are generally secondary, and should improve, but we shouldn’t dismiss good approaches due to implementation details.

You're absolutely correct. But unless the tools are designed so the average user can easily manage their own keys, it's basically PGP again.

I think U2F/WebAuthn dongles actually could solve this problem but there are all sorts of new problems now like "how do I use this with my iPhone and also with my PC" or "what happens when lose my (physical) keychain with my dongle".

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#19

Post by toast0 »

dosman33 wrote: post #9
breput wrote: post #3

PGP felt so subversive back in the day. Key signing parties[1] and porting the "international" version[2] to run on the Amiga. And the very real threat that the Clipper Chip[3] would lead to the outlawing of all other encryption methods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party [2] https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pgp263.features... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

The sad thing is if the clipper chip was ubiquitous today that could have killed the ability for spammers to spoof numbers. Some days I can get a dozen robo calls, each with a different spoofed number. People that want non-backdoored crypto could still do so. I'm still blown away at how hard it is to get people to use any encryption, even people who work in infosec/etc. If nothing else, 2020 was a great year for the…

You don't need a clipper chip to trace nuisance calls. You need an authenticated network that records the origin of calls, and hopefully passes that through when calls are forwarded and makes it simple and worthwhile to report nuisance calls and aggregates those reports and takes meaningful action against the origins.

Anyway, we're getting shaken/stir or whatever RealSoonNow(TM), so we'll probably have better CallerID. I don't think it'll be enough to solve the problem, without a reporting mechanism, but I guess we'll see in the next couple years.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#20

Post by tptacek »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #15
tptacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The encryption mechanisms were tested, found wanting, and replaced in subsequent systems. PGP's installed base prevented them from keeping up. As a result, the constructions used in PGP today are essentially reviled by cryptography engineers.

Really? The fundamentals or the implementation?

The fundamentals. I mean, very much both! But the fundamentals are the more important part.
Post reply on HN