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Is PGP a zombie technology that won’t ever die because there are organizations that have nailed their identity to it? (For everything you think you should use
by seanieb 5y ago
Is PGP a zombie technology that won’t ever die because there are organizations that have nailed their identity to it?
(For everything you think you should use PGP for please use Age - https://github.com/FiloSottile/age https://github.com/FiloSottile/age)
- nitrogen 5y agoIs calling the main player in a space a zombie technology a zombie promotional strategy for unknown upstarts? Seems like such an old pattern.
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoCalling age an unknown upstart is a weird take.
- ameliaquining 5y agoEh, it's pretty new, and new cryptosystems are often more likely to have vulnerabilities. It's still safer than PGP, but that's not a high bar. Hopefully over the coming years it will become more widely used and scrutinized with few vulnerabilities reported, in which case it will then be more clearly safe to rely on.
- someguydave 5y agoage is hardly a complete replacement for GPG
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoA "complete replacement" for GPG would be a dumb idea to begin with. You want a specific tool for each of these use-cases. Choose one from the list for each use case. 1. Private messaging: Signal, WhatsApp, Cwtch 2. File encryption: age 3. Encrypted backups: age + a Reed-Solomon encoder for catching flipped bits 4. Digital signatures: minisign, signify, OpenSSH signatures The problem with GPG (and with PGP in general) is it tried to do too many things. Complexity is the enemy of security.
- upofadown 5y ago>Encrypted backups: age + a Reed-Solomon encoder for catching flipped bits I fear that I might of caused this idea. I have as a result added the following footnote to the article that I suspect is the cause[1]: >Please note that the single flipped bit here is not a realistic example and that in practice damage tends to encompass one or more media blocks. Such blocks tend to be multiples of 512 bytes. I am afraid that someone might actually implement this... [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:agevspgp https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:agevspgp
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoI don't read your wiki, so no, you were not the cause of it. This list item was prompted by a private discussion with friends.
- miles 5y ago> 1. Private messaging: Signal, WhatsApp, Cwtch WhatsApp’s record over the last decade does not inspire confidence, and the issues raised this year alone are quite serious: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_WhatsApp_security_and_privacy_features https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_WhatsA...
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoIt still uses better encryption than Telegram, Threema, and several other products that market themselves as "private messaging" apps.
- tptacek 5y agoSo don't use WhatsApp. That's a reasonable decision to make! I don't ever opt into it or recommend it to people (though I'd happily use it in preference to PGP email, which is doubtlessly the most risky secure messaging implementation on the Internet, arguably even more dangerous than simply using ordinary plaintext email with Google Mail).
- adament 5y ago
- b112 5y agoNever heard of Age here. I looked, seems like it is brand new?
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoIt's been around since 2019, and has been discussed heavily on Hacker News.
- z0r 5y agoYou're trying to tell us that software from 2019 isn't new? The majority of the software that I use on a daily basis is minimum a decade old, and I don't think I'm alone.
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoIt isn't brand new, no.
- johnisgood 5y agoYeah, and it is supposedly a software related to cryptography. Has it been audited at least? They are promoting it so much, but GnuPG has been around for a while now and loads of people have used it. What about Age? I feel more comfortable with GnuPG.
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoWhat is your bar for "audited"? I've reviewed both the design and implementation for age in the past and only found nitpicky things to improve (mostly related to HKDF). I can take a fresh look and make a pretty PDF on paragonie.com if you care so much.
- johnisgood 5y agoI am sure audits could help Age either way. :) I am just saying that it is still fresh as opposed to GnuPG. This is what people typically call "battle-tested", when the software has been used by a zillion of people for some time. Of course I cannot speak about Age much, this is the first time I heard about it.
- tptacek 5y agoPGP (and its de facto reference implementation in GnuPG) is not the main player in this space, unless you define the space down to a point so small and idiosyncratic that it doesn't really have meaning in an broad discussion.
- ak217 5y agoIt's both. GnuPG has very poor UX and it's also so old and so well-known that it kills a lot of the "unknown upstarts". I think on balance GnuPG reduces the security of network communications and the appeal of a web of trust PKI because it's presented as "the main player", people try to use it, realize that the UX is garbage, and become disillusioned in the technology behind it.
- toastedwedge 5y agoHas it been independently audited at all? I looked around and didn't find anything about it. It's probably maybe fine, and of course code can change at any time, but with software focused on security, it would seem more necessary than, say, an audio player (excluding improbable situations). Either way, It's nice to see a GPG alt written in Go.
- tptacek 5y agoThere's also a first-class Rust implementation.
- Anthony-G 5y agoThat would be Sequoia-PGP: https://sequoia-pgp.org/ https://sequoia-pgp.org/
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoNo, Thomas was talking about rage. https://github.com/str4d/rage https://github.com/str4d/rage
- Anthony-G 5y agoThanks for the correction. I hadn’t heard of that project.
- Anthony-G 5y agoToo late to edit my comment: I had misinterpreted “a GPG alt” as meaning a GnuPG alternative implementation of OpenPGP. Only after reading the parent and other ancestral comments did I realise that Age was the project being discussed and that it’s an alternative to OpenPGP – not just GnuPG.
- exabrial 5y agoThe only thing PGP did correctly, and very well, is the concept of persistent identity. Keybase recognized this and uses PGP as the toehold, then from there, created a secure auditable chain of NACL keys. The PGP 'web of trust' and non-repudiability nature of PGP messages each failed for good reason.
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoConsider, for the age and minisign/signify use-case: https://gossamer.tools https://gossamer.tools
- ameliaquining 5y agoI haven't heard of this before. How does it compare to Sigstore? (Also, the use case here is clearly much, much narrower than for age and minisign. Which is good, assuming the problem it solves is the problem you have, but should still be noted.)
- dlor 5y agoWhoa, sigstore maintainer here. I've never seen or heard of Gossamer before. It seems very similar in design!
- CiPHPerCoder 5y agoGossamer is a 2017 design of an idea that was first published in 2015. However, it was exclusively focused on the PHP community from its inception, so it's unsurprising that nobody's heard of it.
- rectang 5y agoWhat ecosystems are out there where I can flick a switch and say 1. "automatically install signed releases" or 2. "automatically install releases signed by multiple identities"? Are any of the big language-specific ecosystems capable of that? (npm, crates.io, composer, PyPI, CPAN, Maven, rubygems, etc.)
- Zamicol 5y agoAge doesn't do signing.
- ameliaquining 5y agoFortunately, minisign does. age doesn't replace everything PGP does, which is good, because PGP does too many things. It just replaces the use case of file encryption (which itself is arguably too general; it's perhaps best to think of age as a good fallback for encryption use cases that don't have a better domain-specific tool). See https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html
- upofadown 5y agoThis is the second link to "The PGP Problem" here. I will only post my critique of that anti-PGP rant once: * https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:tpp https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:tpp
- tptacek 5y agoThe thread on that post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27181576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27181576 Obviously consider the source, but: I think that thread is better reading than the article.
- tptacek 5y agoAge doesn't do signing because PGP's signing mechanics have been one of the biggest fiascos in popular cryptography (to this day, mainstream PGP use via GnuPG doesn't produce authenticated ciphertext, due to confusion on the part of PGP's designers on the distinction between authentication and signatures). In day-to-day encrypted secure messaging, durable signatures are one of those things that sound great but are actually the opposite of what you want. The most widespread practical use of PGP's signature capabilities are for package systems, where the actual contents of the package aren't confidential to begin with; PGP is only being used to sign. But PGP signatures are clumsy and archaic, and there are better tools to get the same capability without PGP's baggage --- notably the "signify" scheme that OpenBSD came up with and that minisign implements.
- deknos 5y agosequoia is better :)
- loeg 5y agoAge isn't a complete PGP replacement (and doesn't try to be). Agree, it's a better tool for the use-cases it covers.
- upofadown 5y agoAge can't authenticate when encrypting to a public key because it doesn't support signatures. So don't use it in this mode unless you know what you are doing. Most people should just use GPG for stuff like this.
- barsonme 5y agoThat’s the whole point. Cryptography tools should do one thing and do it well. Most of PGP’s problems stem from it including the kitchen sink. If you need signatures, use minisign.
- upofadown 5y agoThe requirement for signatures to authenticate public key encryption is inherent. OpenPGP includes it because it is for all practical purposes mandatory. It isn't some sort of useless frill. This is public key cryptography 101 stuff...
- tptacek 5y agoNobody should be using GnuPG casually; if you're still using it in 2021, you should have a really clear reason for doing so. You're virtually always better off using any other well-known tool. The reasons you've provided in the past for defaulting to GnuPG --- such as its avoidance of authenticated encryption being a good data recovery mechanism --- have, to put it gently, not seemed especially informed by cryptographic best practices. It seems like more of a social cause for you than an engineering decisions. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it'd be better if you were clearer about that.
- rvense 5y agoI use it indirectly with pass (passwordstore.org), which is one of the few security-related pieces of software I like. Do you have an opinion on that? I've never heard of age before, but it looks like a pass-like interface to it could be ejected in a few hours if one were so inclined. Is the antipathy towards GPG based on it being too easy to misuse/misapply, or is it because it's broken when used properly?