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

OpenPGPjs v3.0

protonmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 46 posts

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#11

Post by crispyporkbites »

dfabulich wrote: post #9

What is the threat model for PGP in JS? Like, is there an Alice, Bob, Carol, Eve story under which PGP in JS makes sense? The canonical example that IMO doesn't make sense is when Alice and Bob want to communicate privately using Eve as an webmail provider who wants to snoop in on the communications. Alice and Bob can't just trust Eve to provide a copy of OpenPGPjs in a tag on EveMail.com, because then they're trusti…

Subresource integrity means you could trust Eve in some cases. Also if Eve provides a script tag from a trusted CDN it could work. You would have to check it every time though.

What might help is a browser extension that tracks changes and allows you to “lock” into a version of a website.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#12

Post by pzduniak »

vabmit wrote: post #6
xs wrote: post #5

I don't get it. Protonmail still doesn't support PGP, yet they're working on open source libraries for other people to implement PGP? I don't understand these priorities.

What do you mean "ProtonMail still doesn't support PGP"? You mean sending PGP encrypted e-mails to non-protonmail addresses?

Yeah, ProtonMail's really a closed garden unfortunately.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#13

Post by zahllos »

dsacco wrote: post #7
vabmit wrote: post #2

In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a library like OpenPGPjs that is primarily meant for in browser based…

> In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration. > ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a lib…

> Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration.

Given that you need to pass --expert to gpg 2.1 as of right now to even generate an ECC keypair for PGP use (nor use one on an OpenPGP smartcard or yubikey), I can sort of forgive the lack of ECC in 1.0. I don't think it sees wide usage for PGP keys (some clients don't support it, also).

However, as of the last time I tried Protonmail (about 10 minutes ago to check this is all still true) you can't: revoke/reissue your PGP key, validate outside signatures (either on encrypted messages or signed, plaintext messages) or send pure-PGP mail to users outside of protonmail (there's an encrypt for non-protonmail users option, that sends a link instead). Essentially as another commenter has said, you can't really do PGP with ProtonMail.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#14

Post by bartbutler »

zahllos wrote: post #13
dsacco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration. > ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a lib…

> Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration. Given that you need to pass --expert to gpg 2.1 as of right now to even generate an ECC keypair for PGP use (nor use one on an OpenPGP smartcard or yubikey), I can sort of forgive the lack of ECC in 1.0. I don't think it sees wide usage for PGP keys (some clients don't support it, also). However, as of the last time I tried Protonmail (about 10 minutes ago…

This is about to change dramatically.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#15

Post by bartbutler »

pzduniak wrote: post #10
protonmail wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The library is the prerequisite for proper PGP support in ProtonMail, so it obviously needs to be built first.

You mean the library that you've been using from the beginning of the proper web client? This is not an answer. Kudos for finally doing ECC though.

For internal use we had all RSA keys so it was fine. For external use we have to support what everyone uses, and there is a variety as you know. Saying "hey, you can use PGP but all your friends have to have RSA keys" is not a recipe for a good user experience.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#16

Post by wslh »

dsacco wrote: post #7
vabmit wrote: post #2

In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a library like OpenPGPjs that is primarily meant for in browser based…

> In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration. > ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a lib…

> Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration.

My company contributed the ECC support for enabling messaging using the same keys as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16548015

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#17

Post by dmos62 »

dfabulich wrote: post #9

What is the threat model for PGP in JS? Like, is there an Alice, Bob, Carol, Eve story under which PGP in JS makes sense? The canonical example that IMO doesn't make sense is when Alice and Bob want to communicate privately using Eve as an webmail provider who wants to snoop in on the communications. Alice and Bob can't just trust Eve to provide a copy of OpenPGPjs in a tag on EveMail.com, because then they're trusti…

I've been looking for gmail alternatives and this is my conclusion. Protonmail plays the part of the secure and private email provider, but, technologically, can't provide that. The only concrete thing their users have going is the superior legal environment of Switzerland. A less-than-concrete comforter is that if we believe that the people behind Protonmail believe in privacy, we'll tend to think they're more likely to try to protect ours if push comes to shove. This makes me look for alternatives.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#18

Post by kfrzcode »

dsacco wrote: post #7
vabmit wrote: post #2

In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a library like OpenPGPjs that is primarily meant for in browser based…

> In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. Wow...I'm sort of shocked that wasn't a v1.0 consideration. > ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a lib…

Aren't there multiple operating quantum computers right now? Isn't this a very imminent problem?

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#19

Post by dane-pgp »

dfabulich wrote: post #9

What is the threat model for PGP in JS? Like, is there an Alice, Bob, Carol, Eve story under which PGP in JS makes sense? The canonical example that IMO doesn't make sense is when Alice and Bob want to communicate privately using Eve as an webmail provider who wants to snoop in on the communications. Alice and Bob can't just trust Eve to provide a copy of OpenPGPjs in a tag on EveMail.com, because then they're trusti…

One user story is that Alice uses Eve's webmail, and Bob uses PGP and mutt on his laptop. Before Eve's webmail supported PGP in JS, Bob had to send his emails to Alice unencrypted (and unsigned), which meant his mail provider could read the plaintext (even if he trusted that mail provider to always require a TLS connection when sending to Eve's servers).

From Alice's point of view, she is just using webmail as she always has, except now she has the assurance that no one (other than Eve) can spoof Bob's identity, and that Bob's mail server isn't reading the messages she sends him (unless Eve is deliberately leaking the plaintext somehow despite sending Bob the encrypted version).

Long term it would be nice if the W3C's SRI standard was extended to allow offline signing of JavaScript files:

https://github.com/w3c/webappsec/issues/449

and for browsers to prompt you whether you wanted to run a new (offline signed, maybe independently audited) version of those files.

Re: OpenPGPjs v3.0

#20

Post by theli0nheart »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #4

I wish something like this would take off - https://github.com/kylehuff/webpg-chrome We deserve a better userspace from our browsers. The excuse that "users" don't want this because its "hard" is circular.

The project looks really cool! But...the fact that the website has a certificate error doesn't inspire much confidence. Especially since it's a security tool. :(
Post reply on HN