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Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)

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Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)

#111

EnvKey[1] moved from OpenPGP (RSA) to NaCl[2] for its v2, which recently launched. It’s causing a difficult migration for our v1 users. Moving to a new encryption scheme is not fun for a product with client-side end-to-end encryption. But within a year or so of releasing the v1, it seemed like the writing was on the wall for OpenPGP and RSA. I didn't want to go down with a dying standard. NaCl is so much better . In…

What was your reason for developing the project in typescript? Looks like an interesting choice for a CLI / key mgmt system.

It has a thick UI layer in React (which I wouldn’t want to write in anything else), and it’s crucial to be able to share types and functions across the whole stack, as it’s designed in a way where a lot is shared. That’s the main reason.

Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)

#112
post #93
post #92

Isn't RSA the best assymmetric crypto system for when you do need that? I mean, I get it for signatures, key exchange and data encryption it should be avoided but what else is there for symmetric key encryption such as how S/MIME uses it for example. I always thought RSA+OAEP with >= 4096 bits was an acceptable way to encrypt symmetric key material for transport. I only know of PGP as the alternative which isn't well…

No. You can encrypt symmetric keys with literally any other asymmetric crypto system, such as ECC, as mentioned in the article.

Where does it say that? I only saw this:

> Encryption needs to be done using a protocol called ECIES which combines an elliptic curve key exchange with a symmetric encryption algorithm.

kex+symmetric encryption is not the same as actually encrypting the symmetric key for transport. In situations where you need the recipient to decrypt it with only their private key and the symmetric key must be anything other than (EC)DH derived key, this does not work

Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)

#113
post #36

'"Seriously, Stop Using RSA" for Dummies' please! e.g. for a fullstacker who spins up the latest Ubuntu LTS then generates a pair of 4,096-bit RSA keys using default openssh-server set over a high-number TCP port, what should they be doing that is different?

ed25519 can be generated as easily as RSA (ssh-keygen -t ed25519). Resulted keys are faster, shorter and possibly more secure than RSA.

I attempted to switch to ed25519 OpenSSH keys in 2017 and support was pretty dreadful. Ended going back to rsa4096 just for compatibility :(

Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)

#114
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

>Then using HashiCorp Vault isn't the silver bullet Except it practically is. That's like saying Linux isn't a silver bullet because ls doesn't make filesystems... You wouldn't use Vault to create SSH keys, nor should it. You wouldn't use ls to make filesystems, nor should it.

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Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)

#115
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then using HashiCorp Vault isn't the silver bullet Except it practically is. That's like saying Linux isn't a silver bullet because ls doesn't make filesystems... You wouldn't use Vault to create SSH keys, nor should it. You wouldn't use ls to make filesystems, nor should it.

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