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GPG and Me

thoughtcrime.org

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201–210 of 267 posts

Re: GPG and Me

#201

Post by jshholland »

lucb1e wrote: post #150

> When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. I don't understand why. Did I glance over it, or is it not in the article? When I receive GPG encrypted email, I only have to enter my password and it gets decrypted. Simple as that. Same as when starting me email client, then too I have to enter a password to decrypt the login for the server. I…

It's probably equivalent to receiving a letter written in green ink (British perception that letters written to media in green ink are more likely to be from what I'll charitably call fringe interestts)

Re: GPG and Me

#202

Post by Johnny_Brahms »

unicornporn wrote: post #148
moxie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a definite answer. There's the path we're executing on at Open Whisper Systems, but there are a bunch of other projects working in this area as well (Mailpile, LEAP, etc). I think the problems are solvable, but only if we have a different design approach. So when I see projects trying not-PGP, I'm interested. When I see projects building on PGP, I'm less interested.

I'll take the opportunity to say that it saddens me that I still can not communicate using TextSecure with iOS users. It's been almost two years[1] since iOS support was "promised". TS is great, but we need to be able to communicate with iOS users. [1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/sure/

Signal 2.0 was tagged on github 3 days ago and will bring the textsecure protocol to iOS whenever apple is done reviewing it.

Re: GPG and Me

#203

Post by Johnny_Brahms »

escapologybb wrote: post #185

I'm not a programmer so I was hoping somebody could answer this question for me, why did Moxie choose to italicise the word python in this sentence: "Mailpile had to write 1400 lines of python code just to interface with a native GnuPG installation for basic operations, and it still isn’t rock solid."

He means that you can do alot in 1400 lines of python, and if interfacing with GPG needs that much to be "not rock solid" there is something wrong.

Re: GPG and Me

#204

Post by whyever »

zobzu wrote: post #156
csoghoian wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "Redphone? Whisper? and various other projects - while very cool - didn't achieve even as much popularity as GnuPG" The Axolotl protocol that was created for Whisper System's TextSecure is now used, by default, by Cyanogenmod (10 million users) and the Android version of WhatsApp (more than 500 million installs from the play store). I'd say Moxie's tech has been pretty widely adopted.

Its like saying notepad is a popular because its installed with Windows.

Even if you ignore Whatsapp and Cyanogenmod, you have 500,000 - 1,000,000 Textsecure installs according to the Play Store. That is on order of magnitude more than the GPG estimate of 50,000. In less than 20 years.

Re: GPG and Me

#205

Post by radisb »

When I imagine a world with an easy to use encrypted email system such that anyone could transparently use, I cant avoid imagining either a world sunken in spam, or a world where each individual no matter their computer skills" would have to maintain anti-spam systems. So we are back to square one regarding mass adoption...

Re: GPG and Me

#206

Post by unicornporn »

Johnny_Brahms wrote: post #202
unicornporn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the opportunity to say that it saddens me that I still can not communicate using TextSecure with iOS users. It's been almost two years[1] since iOS support was "promised". TS is great, but we need to be able to communicate with iOS users. [1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/sure/

Signal 2.0 was tagged on github 3 days ago and will bring the textsecure protocol to iOS whenever apple is done reviewing it.

If this is true, it's awesome. I've tried making contact between Signal on iOS with TextSecure on Android before, without luck.

Re: GPG and Me

#207

Post by jnbiche »

hueving wrote: post #164
na85 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming "1990s crypto" is, IMHO, missing the point. Until we discover attacks against the ciphers there's no reason to throw them out just due to their age. If you're referring to GPG's shitty interface, then sure. But how much of that is "1990s crypto" and how much is due to the fact that it's one guy working by himself and barely being able to afford it, for years? GPG with Linux-levels of support would be an entir…

>edit: oh sorry, are we not allowed to disagree with Big Names™? Not when it comes to cryptography and HN. Moxie, Collin, and tptacek are the only 3 people that can say anything that isn't mainstream pop-crypto. Anyone that dares to disagree with them is clearly wrong and must be punished with downvotes.

I agree, and this attitude is one of the things that's holding progress in crypto back.

Should random software engineers experimenting with crypto claim that they've created a software package worthy of being used by dissidents and whistleblowers?

Absolutely not!

But should we be discouraging random software engineers from experimenting with crypto, and starting open source projects that may gain steam...and eventually, after years of use and audits, gain the standing and reputation to be used by dissidents and whistleblowers?

Again, absolutely not.

Re: GPG and Me

#208

Post by lmm »

scintill76 wrote: post #197
lmm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You list plenty of specific problems with GPG the UI and GPG the "API" (though frankly the fact that mailpile would write 1400 lines of python that wrap GPG rather than taking one of the independent library implementations of RFC4880 and bringing it up to production quality makes them part of the problem). But none of those specific problems are problems with OpenPGP the protocol.

Well, I was only quoting the article, but it sounds like he has a good point that the protocol doesn't support forward secrecy. I also tend to trust his judgment that it's too complicated, and/or the complication adds little value for "normal" users. I guess some of this can be isolated as an app/API problem rather than protocol, as you say.

Perfect forward secrecy is of course better than not, but I'm not convinced it actually helps a lot for realistic threat models. It means that when you utterly screw up and reveal today's treason you won't also be revealing last week's treason - but for someone who's using crypto for serious reasons, how often is it that last week's message would get you in trouble and today's message is innocuous?

Would a ground-up rewrite of OpenPGP have PFS? Of course. Is the functionality important enough to justify a new protocol? Not on its own, IMO.

Re: GPG and Me

#209

Post by kS6n6GN8If »

ghshephard wrote: post #109
moxie wrote: post #48

A lot of the comments I've been getting are in the genre of "well... but GPG works." Yes, GPG is a powerful tool that makes some encrypted communication possible . But is it really "working" if it's the tool we've had for the past 20 years, and we still ended up in a world where surveillance is so ubiquitous and privacy is so rare? Having used GPG, it seems more likely to me that there are only ~50k GPG users in the…

GPG is way, way, way to complex for all but the 0.01% of people who are GPG experts. It's too complex for me - and I've read (and enjoyed) Applied Cryptography. But, not having used it for a few years, I went to take a look again - list some keys, maybe SMS some friends to exchange fingerprints and sign their keys, etc... - I'm trying to recall what the relationship between PUB, SUB, UID, Key Fingerprints are. And ho…

There has been a number of studies (http://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom ; I don't agree with everything but interesting reading anyway) showing that entropy from Linux random is not better than from urandom (once urandom has been properly seeded). For this reason, I patched my rndlinux.c GnuPG source code file to always use urandom. Makes key generation instantaneous. When a software is stupid, I don't want to install additional stupid software or comply with stupid instructions; I simply patch it.

Re: GPG and Me

#210

Post by kS6n6GN8If »

na85 wrote: post #155
moxie wrote: post #48

A lot of the comments I've been getting are in the genre of "well... but GPG works." Yes, GPG is a powerful tool that makes some encrypted communication possible . But is it really "working" if it's the tool we've had for the past 20 years, and we still ended up in a world where surveillance is so ubiquitous and privacy is so rare? Having used GPG, it seems more likely to me that there are only ~50k GPG users in the…

Blaming "1990s crypto" is, IMHO, missing the point. Until we discover attacks against the ciphers there's no reason to throw them out just due to their age. If you're referring to GPG's shitty interface, then sure. But how much of that is "1990s crypto" and how much is due to the fact that it's one guy working by himself and barely being able to afford it, for years? GPG with Linux-levels of support would be an entir…

As it happens, I was just studying the CT-RSA 2015 conference agenda, I read that there is a conference talking about some form of oracles in OpenPGP and affecting several implementations. That would indicate that the RFC4880 format is fundamentally broken in theory AND practice. http://www.rsaconference.com/events/us15/agenda/sessions/176...
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