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Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

keys.pub

81–90 of 92 posts

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#81
post #33

I, for one, am happy Keybase user, excited about their new features and can see it already becoming a much better (but not ideal) alternative to Signal for private IM (proper encryption, every device is first-class, usable CLI, no phone-number bullshit, good team chats, etc). But I do see that the same reason I am optimistic is the same reason many users are disappointed and they're right - Keybase seems to have pivo…

Keybase jumped the shark with their crypto coin offering.

This is very misleading, they didn't "offer" any coin, and they don't have their own coin. They added a wallet for a coin that already existed. A pretty good wallet, too.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#82
post #79
post #76

Can anyone suggest a serialization format that can be implemented across languages without being a language lawyer? JSON seems like it fits the bill but I have seen soooo many complaints about UNICODE encodings, whitespace or some other things, and people saying secure scuttlebutt suxx because it relies on perfectly copying Node’s JSON implementation. But dudes, what format is better out there?

The SSB issue with json is that it plays with the json after signing it. Just don't do that.

Please elaborate

What specifically do you mean? I have so far resorted to using http_build_query type algorithms to make it for sure canonical.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#83
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keybase jumped the shark with their crypto coin offering.

This is very misleading, they didn't "offer" any coin, and they don't have their own coin. They added a wallet for a coin that already existed. A pretty good wallet, too.

It seems this has literally nothing to do with the main functionality of keybase though.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#85
post #56
post #34

What does this wormhole exactly do? The docs just say it's a secure connection, but how exactly do you interact with it?

I was wondering how these wormholes compares to an SSH tunnel or wireguard.

i find it weird they reused the name "wormhole" without refering to the original "magic wormhole" either in design or credit... Seems like the potential for user confusion is kind of huge there...

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#86

I, for one, am happy Keybase user, excited about their new features and can see it already becoming a much better (but not ideal) alternative to Signal for private IM (proper encryption, every device is first-class, usable CLI, no phone-number bullshit, good team chats, etc). But I do see that the same reason I am optimistic is the same reason many users are disappointed and they're right - Keybase seems to have pivo…

>proper encryption

Keybase does not have PFS, unfortunately...

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#87
post #76

Can anyone suggest a serialization format that can be implemented across languages without being a language lawyer? JSON seems like it fits the bill but I have seen soooo many complaints about UNICODE encodings, whitespace or some other things, and people saying secure scuttlebutt suxx because it relies on perfectly copying Node’s JSON implementation. But dudes, what format is better out there?

It's not a fun format to work in but ASN.1 is aimed at that and there's also protocol buffers, Avro, and messagePack, among others.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#88
post #63

Question is, will this become a useful tool or a bloated multi-purpose behemoth (with no clearly defined purpose) like Keybase did? We badly need good simple tools for encryption. For all the criticism of GPG coming from the savvy crypto-crowd, there is still no other tool that performs common encryption-related tasks quickly and easily.

age is the standard answer to this https://age-encryption.org/

I like where age is going. It only does a fraction of what I need (for example, I need to sign and keep detached signatures), but I have high hopes for it.

Still, it is nowhere near a replacement for GnuPG.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#89
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing people say this, but I don't understand it. It was a fun little giveaway experiment funded by someone else, in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography. I don't visit the cryptocurrency tab anymore, and it's not like it gets in the way or anything.

It was a trainwreck that damaged the project's reputation and harmed its users. If you know crypto, it had several problems. There are worse coins to airdrop on your users but not many. The user experience resembled that used by scammers on Telegram and the project's overall behaviour looked like a de-anonymization attack (I mean that seems to be Keybase's business model but this looked exactly like one). All of this…

> This was a bad enough fuck-up that I removed my social proofs and now recommend that people not use Keybase

What do you recommend people use instead?

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#90
Keys seems to have taken the `back to the basics` approach and follow KISS to solve the original problem(s) Keybase was trying to solve (key & user ID management for human beings).

Obviously Keybase has strayed away from its original heart, added all those unrelated elements like social chat, Dropbox like (fuse) filesystem (this is actually OK), team collaboration, SCM, and even crypto currency wallet, so bloated [1], hmm... Do we really need all those? No for me, but I don't have a choice if I want to use the core bits and pieces (good part) of Keybase.

Glad to see Keys, gave it a try on Linux (thumbs up for packaging it using `AppImage` instead of snap or flatpak). However, it had gnome-keyring dependencies (wrong assumption that people use GNOME Shell or variants as default Desktop Environment), issue reported [2] and being worked on. I did run it in a Windows VM and it seems to be exactly what I need for key & user id management, looking forward to its development and adoption.

[1]: Keybase GUI for Linux https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EW0wKs4VcAAL3Qi?format=jpg

[2]: https://github.com/keys-pub/app/issues/6

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