9 ms·

PGP felt so subversive back in the day. Key signing parties[1] and porting the "international" version[2] to run on the Amiga. And the very real threat that th

by breput 5y ago

PGP felt so subversive back in the day. Key signing parties[1] and porting the "international" version[2] to run on the Amiga. And the very real threat that the Clipper Chip[3] would lead to the outlawing of all other encryption methods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party [2] https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pgp263.features.html https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pgp263.features... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

alfiedotwtf 5y ago
The government thinks it still is.
- breput 5y ago
  PGP's biggest weakness was that it was too early. There was no normal user accessible software available. No regular person was going to establish the web of trust or use command line utilities. So now we have easy, strong encryption and the keys are controlled by...someone. Definitely not the user, though. Funny story - even Phil Zimmerman can't use PGP: https://twitter.com/josephbonneau/status/638772283713060864 https://twitter.com/josephbonneau/status/638772283713060864 So maybe it is just a hard problem.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    No, PGP's weakness is that the Web of Trust is an unworkable solution for the general population for key exchange. It works fine for a you and your circle of crypto nerds, but as a general solution it's impossible. IMHO this is a case where perfect was the enemy of good. Many possible solutions were rejected because there was a possibility that someone could MITM your first contact, even though in the real world this is unlikely. The key registries were almost a solution but none of them ever gained enough traction to be a default solution and mail clients were strangely hesitant to incorporate them even when they did implement PGP. PGP was always half of the solution. Sadly they never figured out the other half. Microsoft almost got it working with Exchange, but even then you usually it only works on a single domain at a time. You can't use encrypt an email to someone at a different company even if they are using Exchange.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      Web of Trust is a perfectly fine system but UI-wise a total disaster. There's also the reality that what most people need most of the time is a web of trust that includes government agencies, banks and other major institutions. For the vast majority of useful communications for users, your web of trust ideally goes You -> Government ID Agency <- Recipient. And that's fine - that's what people actually need. People get scammed or deceived by faking those credentials.
      - jandrese 5y ago
        Having to physically meet people to exchange long hex strings was never going to scale.
        XorNot 5y ago
        No but that's the point: you do have to physically go to the DMV, or the bank, quite frequently. And for most people, the important point to point communications are interactions you want validated against those entities.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - UncleMeat 5y ago
        Web of Trust mixes two kinds of trust. If my mom gives me her public key, I trust that it is her public key. If my mom signs some other person's public key - I really don't know how much I trust that. Trusting that somebody is who they say they are is not the same as trusting them to properly vouch for another person.
        jandrese 5y ago
        This is the reason Frendster failed. Friending someone automatically made you a friend with all of their friends, even the ones that were jerks or you had never met.
        5y ago
dosman33 5y ago
The sad thing is if the clipper chip was ubiquitous today that could have killed the ability for spammers to spoof numbers. Some days I can get a dozen robo calls, each with a different spoofed number. People that want non-backdoored crypto could still do so. I'm still blown away at how hard it is to get people to use any encryption, even people who work in infosec/etc. If nothing else, 2020 was a great year for the uptick in using crypto to communicate with non-technical fam and friends.
- breput 5y ago
  Robo calls should be filtered at the network level. The Clipper Chip would have done nothing to prevent this. There is actually encryption technology[1] available that would solve this or at least make it traceable and blockable. But here we are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN Edit: Also the political situation at the time was that if Clipper was adopted, all other encryption technology would be outlawed. It was a very scary time.
  - dosman33 5y ago
    The key word here being "should", and they are clearly not filtering at the network level. I can tell, I still get spoofed robocalls... The clipper chip provided end users the ability to cryptographically prove callers were who they claimed to be independent of the network operator, which is a key need of a crypto system. Robocalling with spoofed ANI has been a problem long enough that I think we can safely say the network operator is 100% complicit with this activity now. The phone company could track down kids war-dialing blocks of numbers in the 1980's in order to make sure they were not telemarketers not paying higher telemarketing fees. Do people really think the phone company is not getting a cut of these robospoofers?
- toast0 5y ago
  You don't need a clipper chip to trace nuisance calls. You need an authenticated network that records the origin of calls, and hopefully passes that through when calls are forwarded and makes it simple and worthwhile to report nuisance calls and aggregates those reports and takes meaningful action against the origins. Anyway, we're getting shaken/stir or whatever RealSoonNow(TM), so we'll probably have better CallerID. I don't think it'll be enough to solve the problem, without a reporting mechanism, but I guess we'll see in the next couple years.
nelox 5y ago
Yes, the only munition available on a t-shirt!
- dylan604 5y ago
  Did PGP did that too? I know DeCSS did this. Did they borrow the idea from PGP?
  - georgeecollins 5y ago
    Yes. http://www.loundy.com/Roadside_T-Shirt.html http://www.loundy.com/Roadside_T-Shirt.html
  - xtracto 5y ago
    And AACS as well. I remember buying some FreeBSD disks from Walnut Creek CDROM in the 90s, these shipped to my home in Mexico. When they Arrived, apparently Kerberos was not included in the distribution because "it was not possible to export weapons outside of the USA". 12 year old me was completely puzzled at what that was about.

by breput 5y ago

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

The government thinks it still is.

breput 5y ago
PGP's biggest weakness was that it was too early. There was no normal user accessible software available. No regular person was going to establish the web of trust or use command line utilities. So now we have easy, strong encryption and the keys are controlled by...someone. Definitely not the user, though. Funny story - even Phil Zimmerman can't use PGP: https://twitter.com/josephbonneau/status/638772283713060864 https://twitter.com/josephbonneau/status/638772283713060864 So maybe it is just a hard problem.
- jandrese 5y ago
  No, PGP's weakness is that the Web of Trust is an unworkable solution for the general population for key exchange. It works fine for a you and your circle of crypto nerds, but as a general solution it's impossible. IMHO this is a case where perfect was the enemy of good. Many possible solutions were rejected because there was a possibility that someone could MITM your first contact, even though in the real world this is unlikely. The key registries were almost a solution but none of them ever gained enough traction to be a default solution and mail clients were strangely hesitant to incorporate them even when they did implement PGP. PGP was always half of the solution. Sadly they never figured out the other half. Microsoft almost got it working with Exchange, but even then you usually it only works on a single domain at a time. You can't use encrypt an email to someone at a different company even if they are using Exchange.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Web of Trust is a perfectly fine system but UI-wise a total disaster. There's also the reality that what most people need most of the time is a web of trust that includes government agencies, banks and other major institutions. For the vast majority of useful communications for users, your web of trust ideally goes You -> Government ID Agency <- Recipient. And that's fine - that's what people actually need. People get scammed or deceived by faking those credentials.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      Having to physically meet people to exchange long hex strings was never going to scale.
      - XorNot 5y ago
        No but that's the point: you do have to physically go to the DMV, or the bank, quite frequently. And for most people, the important point to point communications are interactions you want validated against those entities.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Web of Trust mixes two kinds of trust. If my mom gives me her public key, I trust that it is her public key. If my mom signs some other person's public key - I really don't know how much I trust that. Trusting that somebody is who they say they are is not the same as trusting them to properly vouch for another person.
      - jandrese 5y ago
        This is the reason Frendster failed. Friending someone automatically made you a friend with all of their friends, even the ones that were jerks or you had never met.
      - 5y ago

dosman33 5y ago

The sad thing is if the clipper chip was ubiquitous today that could have killed the ability for spammers to spoof numbers. Some days I can get a dozen robo calls, each with a different spoofed number. People that want non-backdoored crypto could still do so. I'm still blown away at how hard it is to get people to use any encryption, even people who work in infosec/etc. If nothing else, 2020 was a great year for the uptick in using crypto to communicate with non-technical fam and friends.

breput 5y ago
Robo calls should be filtered at the network level. The Clipper Chip would have done nothing to prevent this. There is actually encryption technology[1] available that would solve this or at least make it traceable and blockable. But here we are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN Edit: Also the political situation at the time was that if Clipper was adopted, all other encryption technology would be outlawed. It was a very scary time.
- dosman33 5y ago
  The key word here being "should", and they are clearly not filtering at the network level. I can tell, I still get spoofed robocalls... The clipper chip provided end users the ability to cryptographically prove callers were who they claimed to be independent of the network operator, which is a key need of a crypto system. Robocalling with spoofed ANI has been a problem long enough that I think we can safely say the network operator is 100% complicit with this activity now. The phone company could track down kids war-dialing blocks of numbers in the 1980's in order to make sure they were not telemarketers not paying higher telemarketing fees. Do people really think the phone company is not getting a cut of these robospoofers?
toast0 5y ago
You don't need a clipper chip to trace nuisance calls. You need an authenticated network that records the origin of calls, and hopefully passes that through when calls are forwarded and makes it simple and worthwhile to report nuisance calls and aggregates those reports and takes meaningful action against the origins. Anyway, we're getting shaken/stir or whatever RealSoonNow(TM), so we'll probably have better CallerID. I don't think it'll be enough to solve the problem, without a reporting mechanism, but I guess we'll see in the next couple years.

nelox 5y ago

Yes, the only munition available on a t-shirt!

dylan604 5y ago
Did PGP did that too? I know DeCSS did this. Did they borrow the idea from PGP?
- georgeecollins 5y ago
  Yes. http://www.loundy.com/Roadside_T-Shirt.html http://www.loundy.com/Roadside_T-Shirt.html
- xtracto 5y ago
  And AACS as well. I remember buying some FreeBSD disks from Walnut Creek CDROM in the 90s, these shipped to my home in Mexico. When they Arrived, apparently Kerberos was not included in the distribution because "it was not possible to export weapons outside of the USA". 12 year old me was completely puzzled at what that was about.