Modern Alternatives to PGP • Hacker News Board

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#81

Post by dgrove » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #76

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…

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

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#82

Post by Jeaye » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

What about signing my git commits to prove I authored them? As far as I know, no alternative exists for GPG there. If it did, we'd need also tools like Github to support it before it's adopted.

I do see GPG being replaced in so many areas, so I'm not opposing the OP. Just saying that I use it for signing commits every day and my engineering team is required to sign all commits; Github helps us enforce this by requiring that PRs contain only signed commits.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#83

Post by diafygi » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #66

diafygi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keybase is centralized. The GPG keyserver pool is a decentralized gossip network of volunteer servers (I run one). https://sks-keyservers.net/status/

Keybase is a centralized service but AIUI you don't need to actually trust the centralized Keybase service because all the actual validation is performed client-side (i.e. verifying all the proofs that the people you follow have posted) and all of the changes people make to their profiles are publicly published as a chain that is then periodically embedded into the Bitcoin blockchain. As long as you're ok with relyin…

Correct. Relying on keybase's service to keep the PKI running is the definition of centralized architecture, no matter if it's publicly verifiable or not.

Also, I'm not sure how easy it is to run a private keybase PKI (anyone done this before?). For GPG/SKS keyservers, you can spin up separate pools of keyservers for private PKI pretty easily.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#84

Post by blattimwind » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #80

One starts looking at things differently as years pass. I've been working with computers for >25 years now, and I've learned that long-term thinking is important. Remember '.bz' files that were all the rage? Yeah. Bzip1, not '.bz2'. Good luck trying to read that. For my data, I will stick to things that have been around for a long time and that are likely to stay. Those fancy 'nacl/box' thingies? I'm willing to make…

> Those fancy 'nacl/box' thingies? I'm willing to make a bet that they won't be around in 5 years time.

crypto_box is Curve25519 + XSalsa20-Poly1305.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#85

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

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.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#86

Post by AgentME » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

g45y45 wrote: post #68

justincormack wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not recommended to use any keys for more than one purpose any more, this can allow attacks. So this is by design.

Right, but how does one bind the keys if they do not mutually support encryption or signing

PGP never uses the same key for both either. A PGP "key" is a signing key and a decryption key bundled together and then signed by the signing key.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#87

Post by sowbug » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #60

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…

> I wonder what it's caused by and how we can encourage it Probably because many Germans have a relatively recent memory of the Stasi in the DDR.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others if you don't personally have that memory but would like to understand it.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#88

Post by robotrout » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #77

lucb1e wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch probably do to a similar extent. We were quite involved in the war, unfortunately, and burning records to avoid involving jews/romas/homos/etc. But yeah it's the only thing I can think of as well. I still can't pinpoint what argument it is that they are implicitly taught that we aren't.

Stasi is not that long ago. People tend to forget what the problem was during WW2. See rise of right wing parties (also in Germany...).

Censorship seems to be coming from the left. I think it makes sense for everybody to maintain as much privacy from .gov as possible.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#89

Post by lower » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #87

ForHackernews wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what it's caused by and how we can encourage it Probably because many Germans have a relatively recent memory of the Stasi in the DDR.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others if you don't personally have that memory but would like to understand it.

While this is a good movie, one should be aware that it does not reflect the reality in Eastern Germany all that well. It's not a documentary.

In preparation for the film, the director asked Christoph Hein, an Eastern German writer, to describe the typical life of a writer in Eastern Germany (which is what the film is about). At the premiere, Hein's name was included in the opening credits, but he asked to have it removed, because he couldn't see his story in the film. He described the film as being more of a dark fairy tale than a depiction of life in 80s Eastern Germany.

Re: Modern Alternatives to PGP

#90

Post by gaius_baltar » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

Some problems PGP (these days, this means GnuPG) solves pretty well for me:

- offline encryption;

- distributed web of trust;

- digital signature (for messages and software packages);

- batch processing;

- certification of other users without a server at all;

- ability to use a completely "offline" infrastructure;

- sending messages without revealing the actual recipient (i.e. --hidden-recipient)

- multiplatform;

- easy to integrate in another applications and scripts;

- allowing independent encryption, signature and certification keys but using them together (i.e. I receive an encrypted message that was signed with a key certified by another key. The system must correctly detect and use the certification-only key already in my keystore);

- allows copying and pasting the data (messages, keys, etc.) in an email;

- open source and well tested implementations;

- not forcing me to use it in a mobile phone;

- for god sake, not being an Electron app!

- ideally, all this in a single package.

People keep distilling an irrational hate on OpenPGP but their proposals can't handle all these use cases. Of course, they handle some small subset very well, but none covers all of them (e.g. Signal does pretty good when I need to exchange short mobile messages, but it is of no help when I need to push a few 30 MB files from my mobile phone to GDrive without giving Google all their contents).