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Modern Alternatives to PGP

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Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#181

Post by sa2ajj »

_wldu wrote: post #152
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as the article says, it's a 1990s-style ultra-configurable do-everything design which, in practice, almost always gets deployed in a lowest-common-denominator set of constructions that are themselves mired in 1990s crypto. No modern cryptographic engineer looking at any problem PGP solves would design a system that looked like PGP. PGP used to make some sense as a simple at-rest storage format, but in the era of…

tptacek - What would you consider a good modern way to replace encrypting large text files to multiple PGP keys? That's my main automated use case for OpenPGP in Go. If there is a simpler, more modern way, I'd like to try it... thanks. Edit: We do this, then push the files to a S3 bucket and users can get the files and decrypt them without having to deal with remembering/forgetting static passwords.

sorry, I misremembered the tool. there's one that serves your purpose, however I do not remember the name at this time.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#182

Post by bmn__ »

klodolph wrote: post #139
pera wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your comment, can you be more specific please? you don't have to use WoT if you don't want/need it.

PGP is downright user-hostile once you're not using web of trust. So it's true, that you don't have to use web of trust. But PGP goes out of its way to make your life hell. For example, let's say you have a key (as an ordinary file) and a signed message in hand. How do you check that this key has signed this message, using the gpg command-line tools? The problem with PGP is that it combines web of trust and the mecha…

> How do you check that this key has signed this message, using the gpg command-line tools?

    gpg2 --import pubkey.gpg
    gpg2 --verify-files a-message.asc

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#183

Post by yardstick »

kazinator wrote: post #169
yardstick wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if PGP was updated to remove the old cipher suites and only support modern ones like Curve25519 Poly1305 ChaCha20 etc? (At least for newly created keys/sigs/encrypted files) The aspect of PGP I like is the UI integration. At least when using GPG Tools. I can double click on an asymmetric encrypted file and GPG tools will decrypt it. Likewise my mail client can encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify emails automatically wit…

Then it will stop working for the users who have keys and data in those crypto-systems. They will have to use old, unmaintained versions of the software.

Not necessarily, it could support working with legacy algorithms to decrypt & verify old content. But any new content— any encrypt or sign- would only support modern crypto and associated features (eg newly encrypted files must be armoured / integrity checked, which I believe is optional now).

Users would need to upgrade their PGP tool sets, but all their old data would still work.

The point I was trying to drive at is all these other tools/suggestions lack a good user experience and ease of integration. GPG Tools offers the best integration for PGP I’ve seen, and is actually half decent.

If there’s a modern tool with modern crypto, easy to use, easy to integrate into mail and file management UI (Explorer/Finder/etc) then I’m all ears.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#184

Post by Boulth »

dgrove wrote: post #81
blattimwind wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have PGP keys on the keyservers but don't actively look random people up and send encrypted mail on first contact (perhaps something that can be automated). I'm surprised how often the reply I receive when contacting some German (.de) open source person is PGP encrypted.

> perhaps something that can be automated This is solved using WKD. Thunderbird already supports this with enigmail enabled

Yes, WKD works well for people in control of their own domain (e.g. kernel.org uses it).

For other people there is also https://autocrypt.org/

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#185

Post by Boulth »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #161
pjmlp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone at the office sends encrypted emails when referring to sensitive data. It helps that encrypting emails is one button away on Outlook.

Are you referring to an Outlook PGP add-on or SMIME?

I'm also interested in it.

For the record there is GpgOL plugin installed with gpg4win.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#186

Post by cperciva »

AgentME wrote: post #130
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of your list, the alternatives that George provided check off: - offline encryption - digital signatures - batch processing - no server - offline infrastructure - "hidden recipient" (which, ironically, is a command line flag to mitigate a flaw in PGP, and not in fact a feature of PGP) - multiplatform - easy to integrate - copying and pasting ciphertext - open source and well-tested - not bound to phones - not being a…

My frustration is that a lot of the solutions provided are raw libraries rather than end-user tools. For offline encryption, how do I encrypt a file with a password (or a keyfile)? The solutions provided are a few Go libraries, saltpack (which I think is only a spec? I couldn't find an executable), and then the Keybase service. None of these work as a simple no-strings-attached end-user replacement for `gpg -c`. This…

It is frustrating though because its name is almost un-googleable (most results just talk about "scrypt" as a hashing function, rather than "scrypt" the encryption tool! It really needs a better name) and I rarely see it mentioned.

Don't blame me! The encryption tool came first!

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#187

Post by Boulth »

yardstick wrote: post #166
tptacek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is better. You don't get sound cryptosystems from configurable, flexible things; flexibility is the mortal enemy of cryptographic soundness. That's how "this blogger" "not see" that this isn't better. This isn't some fringe belief among hipster cryptography engineers (among which I'm sure George counts himself). You can read it straight out of _Cryptography Engineering_.

What if PGP was updated to remove the old cipher suites and only support modern ones like Curve25519 Poly1305 ChaCha20 etc? (At least for newly created keys/sigs/encrypted files) The aspect of PGP I like is the UI integration. At least when using GPG Tools. I can double click on an asymmetric encrypted file and GPG tools will decrypt it. Likewise my mail client can encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify emails automatically wit…

OpenPGP is actually adding stuff. Quite a lot of people use Curve 25519 PGP keys already (e.g. GnuPG and ProtonMail support it).

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#188

Post by Boulth »

helper wrote: post #67

Its interesting that pass[1] uses GPG and was created by the author of wireguard, Jason Donenfeld. I wounder if he would build it differently if he were starting today? I feel like the one thing that keeps me from abandoning GPG completely is the general lack of smartcard support in any other system. Are there any examples of using yubikeys to store your libsodium keys? [1]: https://www.passwordstore.org/

> Are there any examples of using yubikeys to store your libsodium keys?

I doubt it. Yubikey doesn't just store private keys in flash memory, they are using tamper resistant element. And only a couple of algorithms are supported.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#189

Post by black-tea »

klodolph wrote: post #146
taeric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is asking past the point. Without a web of trust, how are you securely signing? You can go with somewhat centralized trust, but that only gets you do far. Or, rather, that forces everyone to deal with that centralized source. Much like the web of trust.

> Without a web of trust, how are you securely signing? I can only think you're making a bunch of hidden assumptions about how trust works or why you would want to sign or encrypt data. Maybe you're thinking specifically about things like email, where web of trust might make more sense. Consider, for example, if I'm doing backups and I just want to encrypt them for my eyes only. How could a web of trust even possibly…

Why would you even need public key cryptography in that scenario? PGP solves a very real problem: secure correspondence. Encrypting stuff for yourself is much more trivial.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#190

Post by thecleaner »

pjmlp wrote: post #85
lucb1e wrote: post #47

> No one was sending you encrypted emails anyway Guess what! Since I moved to Germany (from the Netherlands), I noticed that people send a lot of encrypted mail. Not random Germans, sure, but where in the Netherlands the security and broader hacker community was hard to convince, in Germany it's quite widespread. My colleagues (security firm) and friendly security firms (when we collaborate) expect nothing less, and…

Everyone at the office sends encrypted emails when referring to sensitive data. It helps that encrypting emails is one button away on Outlook.

You may be surprised. At some companies i have worked, people passes access keys without encryption.
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