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Switching from GPG to Age

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#21

Post by johnisgood »

lrvick wrote: post #15
zaphar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the only thing I ever actually used gpg for was file encryption. I tried dong key management and signatures for a very brief period 20 years ago and gave up because no one else was doing it and it was annoying trying to do the right opsec things with no payoff. Ever since then, as far as I can tell there has been a very small very niche group who use gpg for anything other than file encryption. So age is th…

By very small niche group, you mean every maintainer of every widely used production linux distribution and most of the core packages that form the supply train trust layer for the entire internet? Or every reasonably competent security vulnerability disclosure team? (Even Google and Apple!) PGP is the only standardized cryptographic online identity layer we have and still very heavily used by anyone working on secur…

Thank you for your comment. For a minute I thought I was going insane because there is no way that GPG/PGP is used only by the minority. Literally everyone uses it, even non-techies.

phew

> any engineering role where security matters that is -not- using PGP smartcards to sign and push their commits, sign code reviews, sign build reproductions of container images, encrypt their passwords, etc.

I agree. Even without smartcards, at the very least sign your commits, among other things. Absolute minimum. Very low bar.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#22

Post by arccy »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #4
aborsy wrote: post #2

Age is super clean and very nice. But I don’t think it will ever be a replacement for gpg (and might have already passed its window to replace it for file encryption). It just does file encryption. GPG does tons of other things that you will find are very useful (like around key management and signatures).

age is so clean precisely because it does only one thing. While GPG has other use cases; the intent is that those use cases are satisfied by different tools. Eg: signify for signing. I’m also considering moving away from GPG, but the main limitation are signed git tags (for releases). For supports GPG or SSH keys. I’m not sure that I’m a fan of signing with SSH keys, I’d rather have first-class support for signify.

you can just have a dedicated ssh keypair for signing

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#23

Post by zikduruqe »

johnisgood wrote: post #21
lrvick wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By very small niche group, you mean every maintainer of every widely used production linux distribution and most of the core packages that form the supply train trust layer for the entire internet? Or every reasonably competent security vulnerability disclosure team? (Even Google and Apple!) PGP is the only standardized cryptographic online identity layer we have and still very heavily used by anyone working on secur…

Thank you for your comment. For a minute I thought I was going insane because there is no way that GPG/PGP is used only by the minority. Literally everyone uses it, even non-techies. phew > any engineering role where security matters that is -not- using PGP smartcards to sign and push their commits, sign code reviews, sign build reproductions of container images, encrypt their passwords, etc. I agree. Even without sm…

Every time I get a dev or executive sending me a Slack message saying "can you reset my password" or "can your provision me in...", my very next reply is "please send me your public key".

They do not get their credentials until they do so. And once they do, our security posture gets better and better.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#24

Post by lrvick »

Arubis wrote: post #18
lrvick wrote: post #13

Age only covers encryption. It does not cover signing, ssh, web of trust, hierarchical keys, key discovery, etc. It is in no way a replacement for a modern PGP keychain. Ignore GnuPG which is a shit show stuck in the 90s. PGP != GPG For a modern long lived personal PGP keychain use Keyfork on AirgapOS which gives you a secure 24 word mnemonic backup, optional split backup across redundant smartcards, and a separation…

I like the idea of AirgapOS; "just turn off the network" has always felt a little dissatisfying. That said, if you're already in the GnuPG ecosystem, https://incenp.org/notes/2015/using-an-offline-gnupg-master-... will cover you for pretty much everything here except the mnemonic backup using baseline tooling. I presume you can get a shell utility to pipe your key in and get that mnemonic version out if you'd like.

> I presume you can get a shell utility to pipe your key in and get that mnemonic version out if you'd like.

Not possible as GnuPG does not expose access to the cryptographic seed.

That said a mnemonic you generate and backup with keyfork is entirely compatible with GnuPG should you still want to use it as a client for keyfork-provisoned smartcards.

You can also use that same mnemonic to generate any other cryptographic keys you want for any purpose, including Age.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#25

Post by tptacek »

lrvick wrote: post #13

Age only covers encryption. It does not cover signing, ssh, web of trust, hierarchical keys, key discovery, etc. It is in no way a replacement for a modern PGP keychain. Ignore GnuPG which is a shit show stuck in the 90s. PGP != GPG For a modern long lived personal PGP keychain use Keyfork on AirgapOS which gives you a secure 24 word mnemonic backup, optional split backup across redundant smartcards, and a separation…

No, PGP is also a shit show stuck in the 1990s.

https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#26

Post by tptacek »

lrvick wrote: post #15
zaphar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the only thing I ever actually used gpg for was file encryption. I tried dong key management and signatures for a very brief period 20 years ago and gave up because no one else was doing it and it was annoying trying to do the right opsec things with no payoff. Ever since then, as far as I can tell there has been a very small very niche group who use gpg for anything other than file encryption. So age is th…

By very small niche group, you mean every maintainer of every widely used production linux distribution and most of the core packages that form the supply train trust layer for the entire internet? Or every reasonably competent security vulnerability disclosure team? (Even Google and Apple!) PGP is the only standardized cryptographic online identity layer we have and still very heavily used by anyone working on secur…

Neither Google nor Apple rely on PGP for vulnerability disclosure handling. Lots of organizations publish a PGP key, but in practice rarely use them.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#27

Post by lrvick »

tptacek wrote: post #25
lrvick wrote: post #13

Age only covers encryption. It does not cover signing, ssh, web of trust, hierarchical keys, key discovery, etc. It is in no way a replacement for a modern PGP keychain. Ignore GnuPG which is a shit show stuck in the 90s. PGP != GPG For a modern long lived personal PGP keychain use Keyfork on AirgapOS which gives you a secure 24 word mnemonic backup, optional split backup across redundant smartcards, and a separation…

No, PGP is also a shit show stuck in the 1990s. https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/

Keyfork only uses modern ECC PGP keys supported by the spec, prioritizing smartcard use, and using BIP32 KDF from a 256 bit mnemonic seed.

Nothing else comes close to the broad compatibility PGP offers. Just need to ignore legacy ciphers.

I suggest looking at the links. Latacoras take on this is IMO wildly out of date (6 years old to be fair).

PGP powers the core software supply chain security trust layer for the Linux distributions and tooling that power the whole internet and the standard does get updated.

PGP is not going away, but it is being upgraded.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#28

Post by tptacek »

lrvick wrote: post #27
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, PGP is also a shit show stuck in the 1990s. https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/

Keyfork only uses modern ECC PGP keys supported by the spec, prioritizing smartcard use, and using BIP32 KDF from a 256 bit mnemonic seed. Nothing else comes close to the broad compatibility PGP offers. Just need to ignore legacy ciphers. I suggest looking at the links. Latacoras take on this is IMO wildly out of date (6 years old to be fair). PGP powers the core software supply chain security trust layer for the Lin…

The post covers this (not Keyfork itself, but Sequoia, on which Keyfork appears to depend).

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#29

Post by lrvick »

tptacek wrote: post #28
lrvick wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keyfork only uses modern ECC PGP keys supported by the spec, prioritizing smartcard use, and using BIP32 KDF from a 256 bit mnemonic seed. Nothing else comes close to the broad compatibility PGP offers. Just need to ignore legacy ciphers. I suggest looking at the links. Latacoras take on this is IMO wildly out of date (6 years old to be fair). PGP powers the core software supply chain security trust layer for the Lin…

The post covers this (not Keyfork itself, but Sequoia, on which Keyfork appears to depend).

Sequoia is only used as a library for a few crypto primitives that there are multiple alternatives for now we will be switching to.

Thankully, because of standards, we can switch to a leaner library set without breaking compatibility.

https://codeberg.org/heiko/pkcs11-openpgp-notes

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#30

Post by tptacek »

lrvick wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post covers this (not Keyfork itself, but Sequoia, on which Keyfork appears to depend).

Sequoia is only used as a library for a few crypto primitives that there are multiple alternatives for now we will be switching to. Thankully, because of standards, we can switch to a leaner library set without breaking compatibility. https://codeberg.org/heiko/pkcs11-openpgp-notes

I think you should read the post. It's mostly not about things implementations can improve about the PGP ecosystem on their own.

Then, I think you should talk to professional cryptography engineers. I'd be interested if you could find even one who believes the PGP ecosystem should be kept going. My distaste for PGP is not an idiosyncrasy; it's something I learned from cryptographers, who fucking hate PGP.

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