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Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

vanitykeys.io

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Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#21

Post by yuvadam »

xrstf wrote: post #19

Interesting 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 nev…

$5 is the lowest tier of keys with no actual significance. I believe that's a reasonable price when you consider the overhead of running this operation.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#23

Post by aw3c2 »

Joona wrote: post #3

Hi, I'm getting the following error using Opera 12.17. Unable to complete secure transaction Secure connection: fatal error (40) from server.

it is time to move on, Opera 12 is not supported anymore and bound to be insecure sooner than later. This problem will be a cipher issue.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#24

Post by yuvadam »

teamhappy wrote: post #20
sigsergv wrote: post #17

I 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.

I'll happily clean up the scripts and make them open source! Would you be interested in helping publish this?

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#25

Post by xrstf »

yuvadam wrote: post #21
xrstf wrote: post #19

Interesting 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 nev…

$5 is the lowest tier of keys with no actual significance. I believe that's a reasonable price when you consider the overhead of running this operation.

"5$ is the price for something worthless." -- Did I read this correctly?

I can see how you would sell keys with fingerprints like "1234BEEF" for 100 bucks, but those 5$ keys are just ... I don't get it. But that's okay, it's not the first time I don't understand why people spend money on something ;-)

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#26

Post by xrstf »

yuvadam wrote: post #18
Sarien wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there are legitimate uses for such keys" - not for crypto

How about education and raising awareness?

How do you raise awareness and educate people by selling them conceptionally broken keys? They will get used to "someone else is creating the key for me", as well as to "GPG fingerprints should look like funny words, not 17AB42DE!".

For testing and explaining GPG to people, nobody needs vanity keys. You don't raise awareness for GPG by having "DEADBEEF" on your business card.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#27

Post by olalonde »

yuvadam wrote: post #12
svennek wrote: post #9

Sorry 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.

It is possible to safely outsource the creation of vanity bitcoin addresses (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3853/can-one-safe...). That being said, I'm not sure if the techniques used are applicable to GPG.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#28

Post by fapjacks »

I'm really dumbfounded and thinking maybe I should just start a slick looking minimal website with a random number generator and a payment form. This way I can sell interesting sequences of numbers. I could avoid the whole mess of generating keys, since this is about as useful as painting a house with a five hundred pound bomb.

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#29

Post by yuvadam »

olalonde wrote: post #27
yuvadam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback, I totally agree, and see my comment below. I'll definitely make this more noticeable on the page.

It is possible to safely outsource the creation of vanity bitcoin addresses ( http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3853/can-one-safe... ). That being said, I'm not sure if the techniques used are applicable to GPG.

Once GnuPG supports ECDSA (hopefully, in the near future, there's a branch with some of the code already implemented) I'll be happy to switch the service to this secure method!

Re: Show HN: Vanity GPG Keys (and help fund GnuPG!)

#30

Post by fapjacks »

yuvadam wrote: post #24
teamhappy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll happily clean up the scripts and make them open source! Would you be interested in helping publish this?

I will help you publish this for a copy of all keys generated.
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