Service creator here, for any questions you may have :)
> We use various heuristics to determine what 'interesting' keys are, they are priced roughly by their uniqueness probability.
I was wondering how exactly are the keys priced.
Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
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Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#12Sorry but no. This makes your private key compromised by default... The most important rule of public key encryption is... Never (really!) let anybody else handle your private key... And why should I trust some random website for not storing an extra copy? The keys are definitely not "... as secure as if you have generated them by yourself. ". Because, if I generate them, I know that my box is the only one that had e…
Thanks for the feedback, I totally agree, and see my comment below. I'll definitely make this more noticeable on the page.
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#13Service creator here, for any questions you may have :)
> We use various heuristics to determine what 'interesting' keys are, they are priced roughly by their uniqueness probability. I was wondering how exactly are the keys priced.
It's not too hard to figure out yourself :) The heuristics are very simple at this point.
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#14I think it's a very bad idea to use this service. Your secret key should never be shared with a 3rd party. Using an untrusted 3rd party service to generate a public/private key pair is like asking a thief to sell you a new door lock.
I agree, this service should never be used for any serious real-life usage. But this is a _vanity_ key service, and there are legitimate uses for such keys where no harm can be done. I'm mainly interested in raising awareness to GnuPG and get more people using it - I also organize CryptoParties [1] in my area, exactly for this purpose. [1] - https://cryptoparty.in/
"there are legitimate uses for such keys" - not for crypto
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#15Service creator here, for any questions you may have :)
How do you feel about asking for over $10.000 (I'm bad at counting) for generated keys while GPG is desperately looking for donors? How do you feel about the ethics of your project in general? It looks a lot like domain parking to me.
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#16Service creator here, for any questions you may have :)
How do you feel about asking for over $10.000 (I'm bad at counting) for generated keys while GPG is desperately looking for donors? How do you feel about the ethics of your project in general? It looks a lot like domain parking to me.
You know what? You're absolutely right.
I'll happily donate 60% of the profits from the service to GnuPG. Let's use this opportunity to fund GnuPG.
You buying? :)
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#17I think we need a new name for all of these new sites: hipster security. Or something like that.
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, this service should never be used for any serious real-life usage. But this is a _vanity_ key service, and there are legitimate uses for such keys where no harm can be done. I'm mainly interested in raising awareness to GnuPG and get more people using it - I also organize CryptoParties [1] in my area, exactly for this purpose. [1] - https://cryptoparty.in/
"there are legitimate uses for such keys" - not for crypto
How about education and raising awareness?
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#19Interesting way to earn BTC. Instead of "just" investing [GC]PU power, you invest CPU power and then sell the result.
In this sense, it's probably more efficient (both power and money wise) than mining for BTC directly, but it still feels like a waste of energy to me. Waste, because I don't think anyone with security in mind would buy a private key off some random website and anyone with no security in mind would never get the idea to buy a GPG key.
Also, I'm still wondering why "FF8243E1" costs 5$. Because it's only 7 out of 8 possible different characters?
Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)
#20I think we need a new name for all of these new sites: hipster security. Or something like that.
I feel like it might be time for us to stop bashing hipsters and instead reach out to them so that they don't actually use services like this one. Writing a blog post (or a shell script) that explains how to generate fancy keys would certainly be more useful.