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GPG and Me

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Re: GPG and Me

#231

Post by wtbob »

guelo wrote: post #114
napoleond wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same as people who voluntarily use Windows. It says something about them, that's all.

Get out of your bubble. Windows is ubiquitous. It has 90% of the desktop market share. There is no generalization you can come up with about that many people.

> Windows is ubiquitous. It has 90% of the desktop market share. There is no generalization you can come up with about that many people.

'People who use Windows do not have both the intelligence not to desire it and the power to do as they wish.'

Re: GPG and Me

#232

Post by tP5n »

higherpurpose wrote: post #217
napoleond wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think that looks like, though? Is it TextSecure on the desktop, with file attachments? Is it Pond? Is it just email, but with a different crypto layer? I feel like a lot of the things GPG aims to do are fundamentally hard. It's not the technology that sucks, it's the problem . I completely agree that the answer will come from thinking about user interactions first, but I'm not sure that the solution will…

Peerio might work, but it hasn't been vetted too much yet: http://peerio.com/ It's made by the CryptoCat author, so make of that what you will.

No linux support, no firefox support.

Literally the second tweet on their twitter account is 'Damn, it works. Got a lawyer who resisted all other methods to encrypt our comms with @Peerio. Big score for usability. Bravo @kaepora & co.' which kind of bugs me, too.

Re: GPG and Me

#233

Post by wtbob »

tinco wrote: post #223
wtbob wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no other model than the web-of-trust. SPKI & SDSI had a different model: rather than trust people to tell you who someone is, one trusts them to tell you who they think they are. That is, rather than me verifying that key 0xDEADBEEF belongs to the individual known to the town council of Lower Shroppington as 'William Morris' (which is inherently fragile: I may not be an expert at verifying identity document…

So that's the authority model, or the 'tree-of-trust'. In a good trust model I think it can't be more than just a weighting or advisement over your web-of-trust, never your sole source of trust. In the end a tree-of-trust rests on the fact that you trust the manufacturer of your laptop that they put trustworthy certificates there so you could verify the roots. We're seeing the major browsers now turning that tree-of-…

Perhaps I didn't explain well. SPKI/SDSI specifically isn't the authority/tree-of-trust model: although it could be used as the infrastructure to build an authoritative, tree-of-trust system, it could also be used as the infrastructure to build a web-of-trust system, and it can be used as the infrastructure to build an even less trust-requiring system.

> In the end a tree-of-trust rests on the fact that you trust the manufacturer of your laptop that they put trustworthy certificates there so you could verify the roots.

For hostname and IP address ownership, there is a central authority: ICANN. The problem with the CA model is that someone other than ICANN can lie about who owns a hostname. As for the ICANN roots, those should be publicly known and verified in the same way that any information is publicly known and verified (ultimately, it comes down to verification).

The problem with ICANN being a central authority is that knowing that I'm talking to the legitimate owner of 'apple.com' tells me nothing. It could be Apple Records or an apple farm or a guy who just really likes Apples for all I know. The CA system uses a ridiculously expensive, painful process to do ICANN's job for it, and still doesn't provide me the guarantees I need in order to do business online.

With respect to email, I can use a tree-of-trust system to guarantee that I can send email to the legitimate owner of an email account, but I cannot guarantee that said legitimate owner is the person I think it is (after all, ICANN in a very real sense owns the Internet, and could transfer anything to anyone). If I wish to, I could use an SPKI/SDSI system to ensure that I'm sending a message to the person who the person who the person who I think is Jim thinks is Sally thinks is Bill.

Which, really, is the only way trust can work anyway. What does anyone know other than what he has heard from others?

Re: GPG and Me

#234

Post by goodmornings »

lmm wrote: post #228
higherpurpose wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTTP is '90s tech. TCP/IP is '70s tech. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Sure there is. For one, we were talking about encryption protocols. Those are not encrypted. The one that is encrypted, HTTPS, sucks (the whole CA system). So after Snowden's documents came out I would've expected more people to say "it's time to get rid of HTTPS". That hasn't quite happened yet, and I'm disappointed by that. In cas…

The CA system sucks but what would you replace it with? The only remotely viable alternative candidate is the OpenPGP web of trust, and, well, see the article. Transport is the wrong layer to do encryption (much as I'd love to see more adoption of IPSec) because encryption and authentication are inextricably linked. Suppose you can confirm that you're absolutely, veritably talking to 174.16.23.46, and your messages c…

The question is why you are even talking to 174.16.23.46 and not a something that is verifiable.

Re: GPG and Me

#235

Post by timboslice »

lmm wrote: post #228
higherpurpose wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTTP is '90s tech. TCP/IP is '70s tech. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Sure there is. For one, we were talking about encryption protocols. Those are not encrypted. The one that is encrypted, HTTPS, sucks (the whole CA system). So after Snowden's documents came out I would've expected more people to say "it's time to get rid of HTTPS". That hasn't quite happened yet, and I'm disappointed by that. In cas…

The CA system sucks but what would you replace it with? The only remotely viable alternative candidate is the OpenPGP web of trust, and, well, see the article. Transport is the wrong layer to do encryption (much as I'd love to see more adoption of IPSec) because encryption and authentication are inextricably linked. Suppose you can confirm that you're absolutely, veritably talking to 174.16.23.46, and your messages c…

> Suppose you can confirm that you're absolutely, veritably talking to 174.16.23.46, and your messages can't be read by anyone but them. What good does that actually do you?

In the current post Snowden climate, can't we agree that this is at least a good thing? The good it does at the most basic level is protect your communications from prying eyes.

Re: GPG and Me

#236

Post by Tepix »

dnet wrote: post #167
lmm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTTP is '90s tech. TCP/IP is '70s tech. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. 1400 lines of python that tries to pretend that an interactive program is a library is definitely a problem though. How's about this: rather than a protocol-up rewrite, how about just writing a library-up rewrite? Write a ground-up implementation of (maybe a subset of) RFC 4880, with opinionated choices of default ciphers (a bit like…

> Write a ground-up implementation of (maybe a subset of) RFC 4880, with opinionated choices of default ciphers (a bit like NaCl). That's what PBP does: - Code: https://github.com/stef/pbp - A short (9:03) talk by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl_gLMef1mI

Thanks for the link, looks like an interesting project.

Re: GPG and Me

#237

Post by lmm »

timboslice wrote: post #235
lmm wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CA system sucks but what would you replace it with? The only remotely viable alternative candidate is the OpenPGP web of trust, and, well, see the article. Transport is the wrong layer to do encryption (much as I'd love to see more adoption of IPSec) because encryption and authentication are inextricably linked. Suppose you can confirm that you're absolutely, veritably talking to 174.16.23.46, and your messages c…

> Suppose you can confirm that you're absolutely, veritably talking to 174.16.23.46, and your messages can't be read by anyone but them. What good does that actually do you? In the current post Snowden climate, can't we agree that this is at least a good thing? The good it does at the most basic level is protect your communications from prying eyes.

Does it though? There's no point encrypting everything twice at two different layers. And if you use an unauthenticated protocol running over IPSec, you can have a dangerously false sense of security.

Re: GPG and Me

#238

Post by joshstrange »

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…

Couldn't agree more. I have public keys available and I understand the concepts at a high to medium level but if it's taken me as long as it has to get a grasp on it (And I still would need to do a number of google searches if I received an encrypted email) how can I expect all of my friends to ever get it? They want something that "Just Works" and so they gladly use (as do I) Facebook, iMessage, SMS, and Email. All unencrypted (Well iMessage is encrypted but I know they could easily view any messages they want). They still have password-reuse issues all over the place (my hands aren't clean either).

It's not that I don't care about privacy, I very much do, and my friends care as well (to a slightly lesser extent I would say and I'm willing to accept more to get to that point than they are). It's just that I am completely overwhelmed, only 1-2 of my friends even understand encryption at a high level and none of them expose private keys for communication. Even other developers I worked with got annoyed with OTR with adium/pidgin to the point I had to turn it off. It's not that I want to throw in the towel, I desperately want a solution, but even easy to use (what I'm looking for) "secure" communication tools get torn to shreds here on HN and so I haven't even considered trying to get them all to switch tools (even I thought it was possible, which I don't).

I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to stop talking to my friends and my friends more or less refuse (due to complexity) to use encryption so what is the purpose of me even trying? The end result would be what? Maybe 1-2 people with which I can talk securely? Now I have to have 2 workflows and even if I have super-secure unique PW's, FDE (Full Disk Encryption, which I do use), and take steps to secure all MY data all of my friends are essentially leaking my data. So if the NSA/FBI/China/Hacker/etc want my communications they can just go after the weakest link, the people I talk to. It's very disheartening to say the very least.

I've considered blogging about this a number of times but didn't want to get destroyed here on HN (if I even posted it here, I probably wouldn't due to backlash) for being defeatist or get told how I am the problem. I am not a cryptographer and therefore am not qualified to even attempt to build secure software (if I even thought I was capable of coding up such a project). Even the tools that are easy to use that DO use tried and true encryption (Like PGP gmail/chrome extension, that's all well and good but what if I'm on mobile? Or on a friends computer? It's just too restrictive) are locked to a an OS/Browser/Device. I really do understand I'm asking for quite a lot (Cross-platform AND cross-device) but without those "features" there is no way I could get my peers to switch.

I'd love to have someone reply with how wrong I am how there is X tool/product/service that satisfies my requirements but I've searched high and low so I don't expect such a reply...

Re: GPG and Me

#239

Post by arcfor »

scintill76 wrote: post #93
yellowapple wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any specific criticisms of GPG other than "it's old and it's not popular"? What's your ideal vision of what end-to-end encryption for the common (wo)man should look like other than "not GPG"? Two questions whose answers are nonexistent in your article.

Specific criticisms of GPG: > the working hypothesis for privacy enhancing technology was simple: we’d develop really flexible power tools for ourselves, and then teach everyone to be like us... Instead of developing opinionated software with a simple interface, GPG was written to be as powerful and flexible as possible. It’s up to the user whether the underlying cipher is SERPENT or IDEA or TwoFish I think it's self…

Users don't need to know about TwoFish, as far as I'm aware. It's just the basic Unix principle of separating policy from mechanism - they can choose the cipher if they want, otherwise the software selects a sane default.

Re: GPG and Me

#240

Post by arcfor »

the_af wrote: post #60
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…

Hey Moxie, it intrigues me that the first thing you mention in your post isn't technical or even about UX (which is what most people in this thread are focusing on). Instead, it's that you're starting to dislike reading emails from the kind of person who would "voluntarily use GPG". I know you said there's no unifying theme to these emails, but can you elaborate? Maybe something about security-obssessed lay people us…

> Maybe something about security-obssessed lay people using GPG to send the most trivial of emails?

Crypto is far more effective when everyone uses it for everything:

https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html

PGP certainly isn't ideal for the "everyone" part, but scoffing at people for using PGP by default harms the "everything" aspect.

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