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Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#61

Post by dublinben »

tptacek wrote: post #18
knowtheory wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally i'd let it go, but i actually would like some clarity on your intent here. Are you implying that Schneier doesn't use encrypted communications on a regular basis, that PGP is impractical, or both? (and to be clear, my intent is not to bait, i'm actually curious)

Most people don't use PGP on a regular basis. I'm use PGP a lot, more than I think most HN readers, but most of the people I talk to (even in my own field, which is full of secrets and adversaries) don't have PGP keys.

I met Bruce this last weekend at a conference, and every single business card I collected had the individual's PGP key on it.

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#62

Post by sudomal »

malandrew wrote: post #33
vabmit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need for a quantum computer. Everyone should be using at least 4096bit RSA. 1024bit RSA keys can be factored with conventional non-specialized hardware (read: CPU's, not even GPU's) with GNFS. IMHO, 2048bit RSA keys can be factored by custom hardware that the NSA has developed. I posted my reasoning for this hypothesis in other hackernews threads. A very quick/terse run down of the main key points - 1) NSA…

IIRC some piece of news surrounding all this stated that the NSA considers anyone using cryptography to protect their communications to be people of interest, whose dragnetted correspondence will be stored indefinitely. I'm curious if the NSA prioritizes these people according to how strong their keys are. I imagine that the logic would be that someone using 4096bit keys is either paranoid or really really has someth…

It's more of a sign that the user is au fait with computers. The sort of person with a 4096-key probably looks at the advanced settings to find the option, or carefully reads the manual.

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#63

Post by lsiebert »

dripton wrote: post #46
IgorPartola wrote: post #3

So I have a GPG key. I used it a couple of times. Currently, it's most useful to me to sign my own Debian package repository. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get into the whole Web of Trust thing. Nobody I know has their own GPG/PGP key that they use and have signed by others and tools like BigLumber and other places where I looked for key signing parties have not turned up any results. I not spending all…

I've seen keysigning parties at a few technical conferences. Find one, preferably one that caters to programmers and/or sysadmins rather than managers and/or marketers, and which has extra space for not-scheduled-in-advance meetings. Then schedule a keysigning party and see who shows up. Remember to bring ID.

Sounds like a fun event for a hacker space.

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#64

Post by IgorPartola »

BWStearns wrote: post #14
IgorPartola wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like there is exactly one in my state. I will reach out to him. Thanks.

Hi NJ :D could be CT but figured it'd be New England at that point. Good luck though, but either way there are a lot in NY so maybe some luck there.

I am in CT :)

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#65

Post by rbchv »

I know the fundamental idea behind PGP and related technologies. My question is, if bumping his key from 2048 to 4096 bits will keep him safe until around the year 2020 (as stated by a previous reader, and from keylength.com), why not just use a 8192 bit key, or 16384 bit key and be safe for virtually your lifetime?

Does the computing cost to encrypt/decrypt make this impractical?

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#66

Post by dfox »

rbchv wrote: post #65

I know the fundamental idea behind PGP and related technologies. My question is, if bumping his key from 2048 to 4096 bits will keep him safe until around the year 2020 (as stated by a previous reader, and from keylength.com), why not just use a 8192 bit key, or 16384 bit key and be safe for virtually your lifetime? Does the computing cost to encrypt/decrypt make this impractical?

Time complexity of RSA operations is somewhere between O(n^2) and O(n^3) with n being number of bits of modulus, so using longer keys than necessary gets impractical really fast.

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#67

Post by joeyh »

rbchv wrote: post #65

I know the fundamental idea behind PGP and related technologies. My question is, if bumping his key from 2048 to 4096 bits will keep him safe until around the year 2020 (as stated by a previous reader, and from keylength.com), why not just use a 8192 bit key, or 16384 bit key and be safe for virtually your lifetime? Does the computing cost to encrypt/decrypt make this impractical?

4096 is the largest key size gpg offers today. It was the largest key size gpg offered in 2009, which is why that's the key size I'm using now. In 1996 the largest key size pgp supported was probably 768 , which is why my first pgp key is that size. I know for sure that in 1999, the largest key I could manage to make was 2048. Looking back at those older keys, I would prefer if I could have chosen larger key sizes for them. So I suspect that in 10 years I will wish I could have used a 8196 or larger key today..

I suspect that gpg partly doesn't offer insanely large key sizes because then people like me will naively use them even if we don't need them. And perhaps partly because dealing with the math for such large numbers is harder to implement. I'd rather it offered much larger keys even if they came with warnings that it might make operations slow.

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#68

Post by dobbsbob »

tptacek wrote: post #9

Or: - he really doesn't use his PGP key all that often, had the same one for 16 years on god knows how many computers, and decided that if he's going to generate a new one, he might as well send a message with it.

Schneier just did an article about public key crypto weaknesses and advocated to make larger keys. Its on his blog from an entry last week when he first got hold of the snowden docs. Did he sign the new key yet? At first he just generated a new key with no sig leaving ppl wondering if he was replaced by a NSA robot

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#69

Post by leot »

IgorPartola wrote: post #3

So I have a GPG key. I used it a couple of times. Currently, it's most useful to me to sign my own Debian package repository. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get into the whole Web of Trust thing. Nobody I know has their own GPG/PGP key that they use and have signed by others and tools like BigLumber and other places where I looked for key signing parties have not turned up any results. I not spending all…

Webmail services could have jump-started WoT a decade ago, much like Hotmail jumpstarted popular email usage. [1] Had they "turned on" PGP for all their users, and then made it easy to tell when messages were being sent securely and when they weren't, it would have completely (and for the better) changed how we interact online (e.g., no need to "sign up" for web services, or "sign in" to every single site we visit; a lot less spam; and incredible other potential besides).

I think we can now surmise one big reason why they didn't.

(tptacek will say that web-based PGP is the wrong way to go because it's too insecure: fact is it's still way more secure than sending cleartext emails, and in any case the point of it is to bootstrap adoption and hopefully trigger an email "arms race")

[1] Gmail even began with some support for PGP signature verification http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/02/gmail-tests-pgp-sig... ... and then stopped. Anyone on the inside know why?

Re: Bruce Schneier has changed his PGP key to 4096 bits

#70

Post by shabble »

maaku wrote: post #50
pndmnm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, a classmate of mine built a rig out of a receipt printer and one of those old handheld scanners to provide an "air gap", though it never really worked (sort of an art project at the time). Might be time to revive the idea...

Meh, you can do fine by using two one-way ethernet cables (you might have to cut the receive wires yourself), and some tweaked network stack.

The ol' DIY Data-Diode[1]

I've heard of using serial lines/modems with the appropriate tx->rx cut, but I don't know if it would actually work for ethernet (maybe 10BaseT only?)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidirectional_network

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