Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Switching from GPG to Age

luke.hsiao.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 148 posts

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#91

Post by tptacek »

lrvick wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a mostly unproductive thread that has done a good job of avoiding the point of my original comment, which is that the archaisms in PGP are not merely a consequence of the GnuPG implementation, but also deeply embedded into the standard itself. I don't care if you feel like PGP is still a worthy tool (I don't think it is, but I get that we can go back and forth on that). You made (by implication) a false…

I have made no false claims or implications that I am aware of. Mainly I was arguing at your implication that PGP is the wrong tool for any job as your link concluded. I don't doubt you or a lot of people could build something better, but nobody has yet, and I doubt any will get it as widely adopted and supported end to end for all the use cases PGP is used for today. PGP is here to stay, and thus must be maintained…

"Nobody has built something better" is not responsive to the argument that "PGP is fundamentally outmoded, not just one implementation of it".

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#92

Post by johnisgood »

lrvick wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a mostly unproductive thread that has done a good job of avoiding the point of my original comment, which is that the archaisms in PGP are not merely a consequence of the GnuPG implementation, but also deeply embedded into the standard itself. I don't care if you feel like PGP is still a worthy tool (I don't think it is, but I get that we can go back and forth on that). You made (by implication) a false…

I have made no false claims or implications that I am aware of. Mainly I was arguing at your implication that PGP is the wrong tool for any job as your link concluded. I don't doubt you or a lot of people could build something better, but nobody has yet, and I doubt any will get it as widely adopted and supported end to end for all the use cases PGP is used for today. PGP is here to stay, and thus must be maintained…

> I would not recommend generating keys with GnuPG today any more than I would recommend using Internet Explorer.

Would you rather recommend Sequoia-PGP or what?

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#93

Post by johnisgood »

tptacek wrote: post #91
lrvick wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have made no false claims or implications that I am aware of. Mainly I was arguing at your implication that PGP is the wrong tool for any job as your link concluded. I don't doubt you or a lot of people could build something better, but nobody has yet, and I doubt any will get it as widely adopted and supported end to end for all the use cases PGP is used for today. PGP is here to stay, and thus must be maintained…

"Nobody has built something better" is not responsive to the argument that "PGP is fundamentally outmoded, not just one implementation of it".

Are you arguing that OpenPGP itself is fundamentally flawed, or only GnuPG (which is one implementation of OpenPGP, Sequoia is another)?

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#94

Post by tptacek »

johnisgood wrote: post #93
tptacek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody has built something better" is not responsive to the argument that "PGP is fundamentally outmoded, not just one implementation of it".

Are you arguing that OpenPGP itself is fundamentally flawed, or only GnuPG (which is one implementation of OpenPGP, Sequoia is another)?

That OpenPGP itself is fundamentally flawed (it clearly is, and my interlocutor here has conceded that.)

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#95

Post by jcranmer »

lrvick wrote: post #72
tux1968 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this more of a theoretical problem, rather than a practical one? In what situations do you want people to discover your key? You create a key pair for Github, upload the public key, and you're done; you can securely communicate with Github. Nobody ever has to discover it. Do they?

> In what situations do you want people to discover your key Just to name some of the most common use cases I have: 1. When people in my orgs want to encrypt sensitive information to me, e.g in encrypted password databases over git. 2. When prospective new clients or security researchers want to encrypt sensitive requests to me via email. Have some in my inbox right now from today. 3. When people want to verify that…

> A PGP key is the only standardized cryptographic passport for the internet

I think this rather gives the game away.

For people for whom PGP is important, their PGP key is their identity. And there is a community of people like this. But it's small--I'd guesstimate maybe a million people or so at best, a true rounding error in terms of the internet.

For most people, however, their online identity is generally tied around one of a few core providers. The de facto identity for open source is GitHub, for better or worse. Do I like that we've moved to centralized identity management? Not particularly. But it is telling that in the shift towards identity management as a concept (e.g., OAuth2) in the past decade, PGP hasn't played a factor.

And in all of your passionate defenses of PGP, where you've complained that things don't support the PGP identity model, you've never really addressed the issues that a) most people don't have a PGP identity, b) PGP identity doesn't provide any practical value over existing identities, or c) things already work well enough with other identity models, that PGP identities don't integrate well with.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#96

Post by johnisgood »

tptacek wrote: post #94
johnisgood wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that OpenPGP itself is fundamentally flawed, or only GnuPG (which is one implementation of OpenPGP, Sequoia is another)?

That OpenPGP itself is fundamentally flawed (it clearly is, and my interlocutor here has conceded that.)

I believe lrvick said that the spec isn't perfect but works fine in practice, and advises against old broken implementations of it. We will see. In any case, imperfection does not imply fundamental flaw.

I might have missed it. Have you elaborated on why you think OpenPGP is fundamentally flawed? Do you know of any GPG replacements (or rather, OpenPGP replacements)? I want encryption, signing, key management, email integration (optional), multiple recipients, subkeys, revocation certificates, web of trust (even if unused), smart card support, and so on.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#97

Post by Ferret7446 »

tptacek wrote: post #90
lrvick wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even brilliant cryptographers can be wrong, or acting on strong biases formed from a limited perspective. In this case I think they have not thought about personal cryptographic key management and how people use tools like PGP in the wild well enough. An engineer coming from a corporate world where everyone is comfortable with a model of centralized backups, centralized identity, and centralized trust is goin…

I think Filippo Valsorda has in fact thought pretty hard about the issues you're talking about, and that, by contrast, the track record of the PGP community on those same issues is pretty dismal.

I think the tldr of their point is that Filippo thought a lot about cryptography but not about actual users or their requirements. What he thinks are cruft are actual features that users depend on

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#98

Post by tptacek »

johnisgood wrote: post #96
tptacek wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That OpenPGP itself is fundamentally flawed (it clearly is, and my interlocutor here has conceded that.)

I believe lrvick said that the spec isn't perfect but works fine in practice, and advises against old broken implementations of it. We will see. In any case, imperfection does not imply fundamental flaw. I might have missed it. Have you elaborated on why you think OpenPGP is fundamentally flawed? Do you know of any GPG replacements (or rather, OpenPGP replacements)? I want encryption, signing, key management, email i…

"Works fine in practice" is not responsive to "outmoded fundamentally, not just by one implementation". That commenter is substituting their own rooting interest in a particular outcome with a straightforward descriptive claim about the standard.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#99

Post by tptacek »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #97
tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Filippo Valsorda has in fact thought pretty hard about the issues you're talking about, and that, by contrast, the track record of the PGP community on those same issues is pretty dismal.

I think the tldr of their point is that Filippo thought a lot about cryptography but not about actual users or their requirements. What he thinks are cruft are actual features that users depend on

No, I got the tldr of their point just fine. They're just wrong.

Re: Switching from GPG to Age

#100

Post by aborsy »

knorker wrote: post #53
aborsy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses key files that are 128 bits. With symmetric encryption, it’s equivalent to AES-128, so not really post quantum. It has post quantum plugins, but those are third party plugins!

Yeah 128bit for symmetric is not enough, but it uses public key cryptography, right? "RECIPIENT can be an age public key generated by age-keygen ("age1...") or an SSH public key ("ssh-ed25519 AAAA...", "ssh-rsa AAAA...")."

It has both public key and symmetric mode.

Even with public key, the file is encrypted in symmetric mode with a random key. The key is encrypted with pubkey.

The file format is built around asymmetric cryptography, so maybe going to 256 bits required some work that the authors does not want. Not sure.

Would have made sense to have standard ChaCha 20.

Post reply on HN