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Switching from GPG to Age

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#131

Post by jcgl »

lrvick wrote: post #130
tptacek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGP does an absolutely dreadful job of key discovery, and further, there is no reason to couple one mode of "key discovery" to a signing tool. Different business domains will have different optimal key discovery architectures. My guess is that at this point more professional environments (think on the level of "companies and projects") have integrated age and minisign than have integrated PGP, which is striking given…

Perhaps you are not aware of PGP Web Key Discovery or Keyoxide. I know of no solutions even close to this for Minisign or Age keys that does not rely on centralized corporations like Microsoft.

You're not responding to the main point. Here's tptacek's wording:

> PGP does an absolutely dreadful job of key discovery, and further, there is no reason to couple one mode of "key discovery" to a signing tool. Different business domains will have different optimal key discovery architectures.

Here's how I expressed it to you:

> Again, I see no reason to bake this stuff (I'll call it "identity management") deeply into the cryptosystem itself. Especially because different encryption use-cases have vastly different needs. The identity management needed for a one-time message exchange between humans shares little structural similarity to that needed for authenticating OS packages from multiple parties. These two use cases are almost entirely disjoint, I daresay. To the point that any effort to devise a shared abstraction will only muddy the waters since there is so little intrinsic similarity.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#132

Post by johnisgood »

johnisgood wrote: post #129
tptacek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will not, because I joined this subthread to make a specific point (that the other commenter was simply wrong that the archaisms in PGP/OpenPGP are a mere consequence of GnuPG and avoidable by avoiding GnuPG), and this whole subthread has been an exercise in avoiding that point and switching to other more tractable arguments. I'm sorry, but I'm not interested.

Cool, so we got two people here who kept saying "PGP is shit", but when asked for an alternative, they weasel out with "no thanks", or "I will not [say]"? Yeah, okay. Got it. I hope you realize it weakens everything you have said. Hell, there is nothing to weaken to begin with! > (that the other commenter was simply wrong that the archaisms in PGP/OpenPGP are a mere consequence of GnuPG and avoidable by avoiding GnuP…

s/for an alternative/for an alternative or an explanation as to why OpenPGP is shit/

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#133

Post by zaphar »

lrvick wrote: post #124
zaphar wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that I do all of those things and I don't care about it at all nor does the absence affect me in any way. Keybase was a nifty chat.

Fair enough. If you care about your identity so little, I expect when your personal domain ever expires you will not mind if I buy it and impersonate you? It would be valuable for my supply chain attack education work.

Have at it. It's not really a part of my identity. Nor has it ever been protected by GPG.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#134

Post by tptacek »

johnisgood wrote: post #129
tptacek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will not, because I joined this subthread to make a specific point (that the other commenter was simply wrong that the archaisms in PGP/OpenPGP are a mere consequence of GnuPG and avoidable by avoiding GnuPG), and this whole subthread has been an exercise in avoiding that point and switching to other more tractable arguments. I'm sorry, but I'm not interested.

Cool, so we got two people here who kept saying "PGP is shit", but when asked for an alternative, they weasel out with "no thanks", or "I will not [say]"? Yeah, okay. Got it. I hope you realize it weakens everything you have said. Hell, there is nothing to weaken to begin with! > (that the other commenter was simply wrong that the archaisms in PGP/OpenPGP are a mere consequence of GnuPG and avoidable by avoiding GnuP…

While obviously I can present alternatives to OpenPGP and have done so, including on this thread, it's important that you understand that this isn't how engineering works. If something is observed to be flawed, it's flawed. Whether or not alternatives are presented with the observation doesn't change its validity.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#135

Post by aborsy »

knorker wrote: post #118
aborsy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has both public key and symmetric mode. Even with public key, the file is encrypted in symmetric mode with a random key. The key is encrypted with pubkey. The file format is built around asymmetric cryptography, so maybe going to 256 bits required some work that the authors does not want. Not sure. Would have made sense to have standard ChaCha 20.

> The key is encrypted with pubkey. Of course. That's how all public key crypto works. It's entirely infeasible to encrypt large payloads with a public keypair directly. But this means that the symmetric key is entirely vulnerable to quantum computers. All you have to do is decrypt it. > so maybe going to 256 bits No, that's symmetric crypto key lengths, which are not the vulnerability when public keys involved are n…

Which is what I said.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#136

Post by johnisgood »

tptacek wrote: post #134
johnisgood wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, so we got two people here who kept saying "PGP is shit", but when asked for an alternative, they weasel out with "no thanks", or "I will not [say]"? Yeah, okay. Got it. I hope you realize it weakens everything you have said. Hell, there is nothing to weaken to begin with! > (that the other commenter was simply wrong that the archaisms in PGP/OpenPGP are a mere consequence of GnuPG and avoidable by avoiding GnuP…

While obviously I can present alternatives to OpenPGP and have done so, including on this thread, it's important that you understand that this isn't how engineering works. If something is observed to be flawed, it's flawed. Whether or not alternatives are presented with the observation doesn't change its validity.

I understand what you are saying. Can you tell me in what ways OpenPGP is flawed and what the alternative is to achieve everything GPG supports? Legit question. If it does everything GPG does, but does it better, then people (including me) may switch.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#137

Post by tptacek »

johnisgood wrote: post #136
tptacek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While obviously I can present alternatives to OpenPGP and have done so, including on this thread, it's important that you understand that this isn't how engineering works. If something is observed to be flawed, it's flawed. Whether or not alternatives are presented with the observation doesn't change its validity.

I understand what you are saying. Can you tell me in what ways OpenPGP is flawed and what the alternative is to achieve everything GPG supports? Legit question. If it does everything GPG does, but does it better, then people (including me) may switch.

I'm really not interested in whether you switch. To me, for the problem domains we're really talking about, this is like talking someone out of wearing a Kangol hat. You do you.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#138

Post by knorker »

aborsy wrote: post #135
knorker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key is encrypted with pubkey. Of course. That's how all public key crypto works. It's entirely infeasible to encrypt large payloads with a public keypair directly. But this means that the symmetric key is entirely vulnerable to quantum computers. All you have to do is decrypt it. > so maybe going to 256 bits No, that's symmetric crypto key lengths, which are not the vulnerability when public keys involved are n…

Which is what I said.

Well, I'd say you left out all the important bits, to the point where your comment could easily be read as "it's the symmetric key that matters, even with public key".

But whatever. Now I know. Both the choice of symmetric key length AND the choice of public key algorithms independent of each other make this format not PQ.

Why anyone in their right mind would migrate to such algorithms in 2025 I have no idea, and especially coming from someone like Filippo it's baffling.

Those already on PQ are better off staying. Those who are not should move to a PQ, not this.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#139

Post by tptacek »

lrvick wrote: post #123
jcranmer wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A PGP key is the only standardized cryptographic passport for the internet I think this rather gives the game away. For people for whom PGP is important, their PGP key is their identity. And there is a community of people like this. But it's small--I'd guesstimate maybe a million people or so at best, a true rounding error in terms of the internet. For most people, however, their online identity is generally tied a…

I do indeed strongly believe decentralized identity is critical to free internet. I cannot imagine any good outcomes from trusting a small handful of corporations that answer to a small handful of governments to decide what identity and access mean online. But to your point, not nearly enough people have a concept of a desire to want digital sovereignty. Ownership of their own identity in a way a company has no contr…

This is what I mean when I suggest people who use PGP are LARPing. It's perfectly reasonable to prefer decentralized systems to centralized ones or to think that it's critically important to the future of the Internet that we pursue decentralization. But cryptosystems need to function when lives are on the line; the preference of an system with inferior, flawed cryptography, in pursuit of a philosophical goal about Internet governance, betrays the fact that the security you're after is only a secondary goal.

You see all sorts of different variants of this argument. People cling to PGP because they believe SMTP email needs a future. What does that have to do with protecting the life of a user? Nothing. People cling to PGP because of concerns about open source. Same issue. Not wanting to run things on their phone. Same issue.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#140

Post by johnisgood »

tptacek wrote: post #137
johnisgood wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you are saying. Can you tell me in what ways OpenPGP is flawed and what the alternative is to achieve everything GPG supports? Legit question. If it does everything GPG does, but does it better, then people (including me) may switch.

I'm really not interested in whether you switch. To me, for the problem domains we're really talking about, this is like talking someone out of wearing a Kangol hat. You do you.

This is absurd. You have not told me (or anyone else for that matter) what to switch to and why.

You cannot be taken seriously. At this point I think you are full of shit.

If you care about security, you should care about people switching, but you do you. Keep it to yourself, keep it a secret, and keep bitching about OpenPGP, I suppose.

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