4 ms·

We have more choices than store and forward now. Look at systems like Croc or magic wormhole to exchange files. Look at systems like the axolotl prekey ratchet

We have more choices than store and forward now. Look at systems like Croc or magic wormhole to exchange files. Look at systems like the axolotl prekey ratchet if you definitely need async connectivity. The actual use cases for PGP are few and far between. Signing public releases, and attempting to send unsolicited secure mail to someone you don't know.

tptacek 2y ago
Minisign and Sigstore are two purpose-build cryptosystems for proving the authenticity of public software releases.
- palata 2y ago
  How much can I trust Minisign and Sigstore? I mean PGP is everywhere, everybody knows what it is and it has been maintained for decades. If I sign a file with Minisign, how likely is it that the person who will want to check the signature will know what Minisign is, will be on a system that has a trustworthy implementation of it, and how likely is it that this implementation will be maintained for at least some years? And does Minisign work with hardware keys? I looked at the Sigstore website, and to be very honest I don't really understand what it does. They seem to have a tool for signing containers (not my use-case) and other things I don't think I do. Do they have a tool to sign a file? Then should I use Minisign or Sigstore, or both? And expect other people to know both? What if they use 2 other systems they like, should I now use 4? With PGP this all seems pretty obvious, and PGP signatures don't seem to be bad, right?
  - palata 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tptacek 2y ago
      If you want to publish a PGP signature of your own random files, go ahead and do it; nobody is going to dunk on you for it. If you're managing a major platform, use something better than PGP, which wasn't designed for this problem. See Python's experience with PGP signatures --- and, especially, with reliably verifying them --- for reasons why. Also: if you're "genuinely" asking questions, you might want to be careful about back-loading them with assertions that suggest you already believe you know the answer, and aren't so much asking as hoping to bait something you can rebut.
      - palata 2y ago
        > if you're "genuinely" asking questions, you might want to be careful about back-loading them with assertions that suggest you already believe you know the answer I don't know the answers. English is not my language, so I express myself as best as I can. I just re-read my answer above, and what you are saying isn't obvious to me. Not saying you're wrong: most likely you are right. Maybe I should write in my first language and hope that people translate it :-). I am just saying that it's often worth assuming good faith. It's not the first time I try to ask when I see criticism of PGP, and I still don't have answers. I am not saying PGP is great: just that I can actually use it with my hardware keys everywhere I need to. When I search for "minisign", I find different repositories from different authors I don't know. Is it better to use PGP or to use some alternative from the first result given by my search engine? Some other thoughts (all are things I can currently do with PGP): * age is written in Go, so I assume it won't work on Android. Are there alternatives that support Android? I haven't found any. * rage is written in rust. Assuming it is trustworthy (it's not the same author as age), I haven't seen any information about Android. * The age-plugin-yubikey doesn't seem to work on Android [4] * It's really not clear to me if minisign works with hardware keys [1][2]. There is an "experimental" fork by Yubico, but it hasn't been updated in a year [3]. Not sure about other hardware keys. [1]: https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/100 https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/100 [2]: https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/95 https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/95 [3]: https://github.com/YubicoLabs/minisign-fido/ https://github.com/YubicoLabs/minisign-fido/ [4]: https://github.com/str4d/age-plugin-yubikey/issues/109 https://github.com/str4d/age-plugin-yubikey/issues/109
    - cpach 2y ago
      GnuPG is confusing, but what’s worse: It’s also old and crappy and it tries to be all things to all people. There’s very few reasons to still use it in the year 2024. https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/ https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/
      - palata 2y ago
        I use pass [1] as a password manager. It uses PGP. I use it with a hardware key. Is there an alternative that doesn't use PGP? I would be happy to use it, I just haven't found anything. My issue is that as soon as I have PGP configured for pass, I don't really have a reason for not using PGP for other things (like encrypting files or signing stuff). [1]: https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/
palata 2y ago
> The actual use cases for PGP are few and far between. I use https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/ with a hardware key on multiple OSes (including Linux, Android and macOS). I don't know of a better alternative to that. No, I don't want to use 1Password. I want the UX of passwordstore. And I want to be able to somehow trust the password manager I use (if it comes from a random repo on the Internet, it's harder), and to somehow trust that it will still work in a few years. PGP has been around for decades, it feels pretty official and it should stay for a while, given that people have been trying to kill it for decades and complain that it can't seem to die :-).
- anotherhue 2y ago
  I actually use pass in the same way, but to be fair gpg is doing some very basic pubkey crypto / HMAC in this case. Age or a sufficiently complicated openssl call could probably be swapped in if desired. HSM agent features aside.
  - palata 2y ago
    > ... could probably be swapped in if desired. That's exactly my point! I do understand that in 2024, "we could probably do better than PGP if desired". But before complaining about people using PGP, maybe "we" should actually do it. It is more convenient for me to use pass with PGP than to write my own alternative just because people complain about my using PGP, right?
    - anotherhue 2y ago
      What I'm saying is that PGP is an implementation detail as far as pass is concerned. Should the pass developers choose to switch it out I don't think there would be much visible change to the users.
      - palata 2y ago
        Well that's a fundamental change that is exposed to the user: if you use pass, you need a PGP key. And if you don't know what a PGP key is, you should probably not use pass because you won't be able to use it on more than one computer and you won't be able to back it up. If you want to use it with a hardware key, you fundamentally need to know how to configure that hardware key with a PGP key. If you want to use it on Android (there is "android-password-store" for that), you need to know how to handle a PGP key. I recently discovered "passage", which is pass, but using age. If you want to use it with a hardware key, you need to setup a plugin (which is fine). If you want to use it on Android... I just don't think it exists yet (even without the hardware key). What I'm saying is that it's easy to say that "it's completely stupid to use PGP nowadays", but my experience in practice is that there are some actual use-cases where I don't have an alternative. Telling me "sure, you should write and maintain the alternative" doesn't sound like a convincing way to tell me "you don't need PGP".

tptacek 2y ago

Minisign and Sigstore are two purpose-build cryptosystems for proving the authenticity of public software releases.

palata 2y ago
How much can I trust Minisign and Sigstore? I mean PGP is everywhere, everybody knows what it is and it has been maintained for decades. If I sign a file with Minisign, how likely is it that the person who will want to check the signature will know what Minisign is, will be on a system that has a trustworthy implementation of it, and how likely is it that this implementation will be maintained for at least some years? And does Minisign work with hardware keys? I looked at the Sigstore website, and to be very honest I don't really understand what it does. They seem to have a tool for signing containers (not my use-case) and other things I don't think I do. Do they have a tool to sign a file? Then should I use Minisign or Sigstore, or both? And expect other people to know both? What if they use 2 other systems they like, should I now use 4? With PGP this all seems pretty obvious, and PGP signatures don't seem to be bad, right?
- palata 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 2y ago
    If you want to publish a PGP signature of your own random files, go ahead and do it; nobody is going to dunk on you for it. If you're managing a major platform, use something better than PGP, which wasn't designed for this problem. See Python's experience with PGP signatures --- and, especially, with reliably verifying them --- for reasons why. Also: if you're "genuinely" asking questions, you might want to be careful about back-loading them with assertions that suggest you already believe you know the answer, and aren't so much asking as hoping to bait something you can rebut.
    - palata 2y ago
      > if you're "genuinely" asking questions, you might want to be careful about back-loading them with assertions that suggest you already believe you know the answer I don't know the answers. English is not my language, so I express myself as best as I can. I just re-read my answer above, and what you are saying isn't obvious to me. Not saying you're wrong: most likely you are right. Maybe I should write in my first language and hope that people translate it :-). I am just saying that it's often worth assuming good faith. It's not the first time I try to ask when I see criticism of PGP, and I still don't have answers. I am not saying PGP is great: just that I can actually use it with my hardware keys everywhere I need to. When I search for "minisign", I find different repositories from different authors I don't know. Is it better to use PGP or to use some alternative from the first result given by my search engine? Some other thoughts (all are things I can currently do with PGP): * age is written in Go, so I assume it won't work on Android. Are there alternatives that support Android? I haven't found any. * rage is written in rust. Assuming it is trustworthy (it's not the same author as age), I haven't seen any information about Android. * The age-plugin-yubikey doesn't seem to work on Android [4] * It's really not clear to me if minisign works with hardware keys [1][2]. There is an "experimental" fork by Yubico, but it hasn't been updated in a year [3]. Not sure about other hardware keys. [1]: https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/100 https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/100 [2]: https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/95 https://github.com/jedisct1/minisign/issues/95 [3]: https://github.com/YubicoLabs/minisign-fido/ https://github.com/YubicoLabs/minisign-fido/ [4]: https://github.com/str4d/age-plugin-yubikey/issues/109 https://github.com/str4d/age-plugin-yubikey/issues/109
  - cpach 2y ago
    GnuPG is confusing, but what’s worse: It’s also old and crappy and it tries to be all things to all people. There’s very few reasons to still use it in the year 2024. https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/ https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/
    - palata 2y ago
      I use pass [1] as a password manager. It uses PGP. I use it with a hardware key. Is there an alternative that doesn't use PGP? I would be happy to use it, I just haven't found anything. My issue is that as soon as I have PGP configured for pass, I don't really have a reason for not using PGP for other things (like encrypting files or signing stuff). [1]: https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/

palata 2y ago

> The actual use cases for PGP are few and far between. I use https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/ with a hardware key on multiple OSes (including Linux, Android and macOS). I don't know of a better alternative to that. No, I don't want to use 1Password. I want the UX of passwordstore. And I want to be able to somehow trust the password manager I use (if it comes from a random repo on the Internet, it's harder), and to somehow trust that it will still work in a few years. PGP has been around for decades, it feels pretty official and it should stay for a while, given that people have been trying to kill it for decades and complain that it can't seem to die :-).

anotherhue 2y ago
I actually use pass in the same way, but to be fair gpg is doing some very basic pubkey crypto / HMAC in this case. Age or a sufficiently complicated openssl call could probably be swapped in if desired. HSM agent features aside.
- palata 2y ago
  > ... could probably be swapped in if desired. That's exactly my point! I do understand that in 2024, "we could probably do better than PGP if desired". But before complaining about people using PGP, maybe "we" should actually do it. It is more convenient for me to use pass with PGP than to write my own alternative just because people complain about my using PGP, right?
  - anotherhue 2y ago
    What I'm saying is that PGP is an implementation detail as far as pass is concerned. Should the pass developers choose to switch it out I don't think there would be much visible change to the users.
    - palata 2y ago
      Well that's a fundamental change that is exposed to the user: if you use pass, you need a PGP key. And if you don't know what a PGP key is, you should probably not use pass because you won't be able to use it on more than one computer and you won't be able to back it up. If you want to use it with a hardware key, you fundamentally need to know how to configure that hardware key with a PGP key. If you want to use it on Android (there is "android-password-store" for that), you need to know how to handle a PGP key. I recently discovered "passage", which is pass, but using age. If you want to use it with a hardware key, you need to setup a plugin (which is fine). If you want to use it on Android... I just don't think it exists yet (even without the hardware key). What I'm saying is that it's easy to say that "it's completely stupid to use PGP nowadays", but my experience in practice is that there are some actual use-cases where I don't have an alternative. Telling me "sure, you should write and maintain the alternative" doesn't sound like a convincing way to tell me "you don't need PGP".