7 ms·

GnuPG - 16 Years of protecting privacy

140 points by e1ven 13y ago

nwalfield 13y ago
This blog post is partially about the crowd funding campaign, but the author didn't include a link to the campaign! http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructure/home http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructur...
Trufa 13y ago
For a more readable format: https://www.readability.com/articles/jzsno986 https://www.readability.com/articles/jzsno986
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  I don't see any discernible difference.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
grandinj 13y ago
Except that the tool itself is so painful to use, and has such a shallow integration with things like email clients, that using it requires a considerable degree of self-discipline. I think I installed it once, and then when my machine required rebuilding, I just couldn't bring myself to install it again. I wish it weren't so, but a new website is not something that is going to speed the adoption of GnuPG.
- nwalfield 13y ago
  This page explains what the money is going towards: http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructure/needs They are looking for funding to: - Release GnuPG 2.1 - Create a new web site According to the descriptions, the new web site is not only about a new theme, but also about creating and collecting content that explains how to use GnuPG and encryption, in general.
  - nodata 13y ago
    Integration and ease of use is what the GP is looking for, not another website.
- tptacek 13y ago
  If you use Mail.app on OS X, GPGmail comes as close as anything to providing transparently usable email encryption. Admittedly, "as close as anything" does not mean "within a mile of it", but if you're deliberate about keeping your mail secure, GPGmail is usable.
- Kerrick 13y ago
  I find it trivial to use for email, because I use OS X, Apple Mail, and GPGTools' GPGMail plugin [0]. [0]: https://gpgtools.org/ https://gpgtools.org/
  - UweSchmidt 13y ago
    So do you actually use it? What is the rate of adoption among your friends and colleagues? How pleasant do you find introducing and explaining the whole process to a nontechnical person?
    - thematt 13y ago
      I do and it's an awful experience. The rate of adoption is 0% for the most part, there's no easy way to make it usable for non-technical people.
- UweSchmidt 13y ago
  Same experience here. It's just barely good enough to claim the space of 'technically correct OS crypto implementation', thereby discouraging alternative efforts.
- jagermo 13y ago
  Agreed. Its simply not easy enough to use so I could recommend it to my friends with lesser it knowledge. However I have hopes for projects like MailPile (https://www.mailpile.is/ https://www.mailpile.is/)
- dublinben 13y ago
  If you haven't used Enigmail with Thunderbird, then you wouldn't know how easy it is to use GPG.
  - mkesper 13y ago
    Although Enigmail still has some rough edges to be honest!
- technomancy 13y ago
  I started using GPG seriously once the "easypg" integration landed in Emacs 23. When you open a .gpg file it prompts for your passphrase and decrypts transparently, and when saving a new .gpg file it prompts you with a list from which you can select recipients to encrypt to. The integration with Emacs mail clients is fantastic too; just M-x mml-secure-sign or M-x mml-secure-encrypt when composing, and incoming messages with signatures are typically checked for you. This totally changed the way I used GPG. (from "not at all" to "every day")
  - stinkytaco 13y ago
    I'm working through the irony of your finding GPG easier to use once it landed in emacs. I mean... Emacs for God's sake. In all honesty, however, part of the "difficulty" of GPG is really by design. You need to be deliberate about signing and encrypting because security should be a careful and deliberate act. If you're hoping for the program to take care of it transparently, you're probably not being safe enough. At least Emacs requires you to go through an explicit process. As you have to do with everything in Emacs.
    - velis_vel 13y ago
      > You need to be deliberate about signing and encrypting because security should be a careful and deliberate act. Why? You don't have to be 'deliberate' about encrypting when you're using SSH or HTTPS.
      - stinkytaco 13y ago
        True, but we're putting a lot of trust in third parties in that situation, no? HTTPS requires us to say "sure Verisign [or insert authority here], I believe you." If I'm doing that, why not just trust Google? Why use email encryption at all? SSH is more in our control, but it's still trusting a third party (a server) and it still requires a deliberate act to set up and use (unlike HTTPS).
codex 13y ago
Changes to Gmail made by a couple of engineers would so more to protect privacy than GNU ever could.
- Joeboy 13y ago
  How?
  - RamiK 13y ago
    Client side encryption\decryption(can be done in javascript) with Gmail storing and passing nothing but encrypted data they themselves have no means of reading. Of course, that would mean Google has no means of directing ads based on content so they would have no incentive to run Gmail in the first place...
- technomancy 13y ago
  Right, as if Gmail would even exist without GNU.
  - clarry 13y ago
    What does Gmail require GNU for?
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Assuming sincerity: much of the technical stack is based on GNU tools, projects, libraries, etc.
- mkesper 13y ago
  What? Gmail and privacy in one sentence? How does that fit?
tptacek 13y ago
So many people seem enamored of the idea of building software to protect users from NSA, and respond by designing new cryptosystems. These efforts invariably fail, because crypto is very hard, and professional crypto requires 10x verification (particularly at the design stage) as it does implementation. It baffles me that nobody has instead picked up the challenge of taking the PGP/GPG cryptosystem and making it more usable. That seems like an incredibly valuable project that also makes great use of the skills of the sorts of people that tend to want to work on privacy software. Paradoxically, the more you know about crypto, the less inclined you usually are to build new crypto.
- e1ven 13y ago
  I've been working on using GPG behind-the-scenes, so I can speak to a few reasons why it might not be used more frequently. 1) GPG is -terrible- to use as a library. There are a lot of wrappers for various languages. Almost most all of them call the gpg executable, and scrape it's input. This is crazy-town loony-toons. In theory, gpgme is supposed to be the solution.. But gpgme ends up calling the binary itself in many cases! 2) GPG assumes you want to use the whole ecosystem. GPG is sort of a mega-framework. It assumes you want to do everything the GPG way - Use gpg subkeys, keyservers, WOT, Import keys to a central keychain, etc. I've been able to go through with options flags and disable things I don't want, but it's all opt-out, not opt-in. 3) Because of 1 and 2, you can't run GPG entirely in memory. It writes a lot of files to the filesystem.. I've been bypassing this by running in ramdisks with ephemeral directories, but it's a PITA. 4) 2.1 has been in the works.. FOREVER. The first betas of gpg 2.1 were in 2010.. I understand they want to get this right, but that's a really really really log dev-cycle. I donated to the crowdfunding, and I hope it helps get gpg out sooner. GPG 2.1 is the first stable gpg release that includes ECC support (specifically, DJB's 25519). This is a really really big feature, that a lot of people have been waiting for. In any event, I like GPG, and I'm using GPG because it's been hardened, and I'm not smart enough to do my own crypto. But GPG doesn't make itself easy to integrate.
  - pyre 13y ago
    > There are a lot of wrappers for various languages. Almost most all of them call the gpg executable, and scrape it's input. This is crazy-town loony-toons. > In theory, gpgme is supposed to be the solution.. But gpgme ends up calling the binary itself in many cases! I've heard of this many times, but is there a good reason behind this? Are there extra security considerations behind making this a shared library? Is it just "not the focus of development" much in the same way that changing the GIMP UI was always "off the table" for the longest time because the devs didn't want to do it?
miga 13y ago
2^2^2 years protecting privacy, that is!
- iso-8859-1 13y ago
  From now on it will never again not matter if you evaluate that expression from left to right or right to left :)

140 points by e1ven 13y ago

This blog post is partially about the crowd funding campaign, but the author didn't include a link to the campaign! http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructure/home http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructur...

Trufa 13y ago

For a more readable format: https://www.readability.com/articles/jzsno986 https://www.readability.com/articles/jzsno986

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
I don't see any discernible difference.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

grandinj 13y ago

Except that the tool itself is so painful to use, and has such a shallow integration with things like email clients, that using it requires a considerable degree of self-discipline. I think I installed it once, and then when my machine required rebuilding, I just couldn't bring myself to install it again. I wish it weren't so, but a new website is not something that is going to speed the adoption of GnuPG.

nwalfield 13y ago
This page explains what the money is going towards: http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructure/needs They are looking for funding to: - Release GnuPG 2.1 - Create a new web site According to the descriptions, the new web site is not only about a new theme, but also about creating and collecting content that explains how to use GnuPG and encryption, in general.
- nodata 13y ago
  Integration and ease of use is what the GP is looking for, not another website.
tptacek 13y ago
If you use Mail.app on OS X, GPGmail comes as close as anything to providing transparently usable email encryption. Admittedly, "as close as anything" does not mean "within a mile of it", but if you're deliberate about keeping your mail secure, GPGmail is usable.
Kerrick 13y ago
I find it trivial to use for email, because I use OS X, Apple Mail, and GPGTools' GPGMail plugin [0]. [0]: https://gpgtools.org/ https://gpgtools.org/
- UweSchmidt 13y ago
  So do you actually use it? What is the rate of adoption among your friends and colleagues? How pleasant do you find introducing and explaining the whole process to a nontechnical person?
  - thematt 13y ago
    I do and it's an awful experience. The rate of adoption is 0% for the most part, there's no easy way to make it usable for non-technical people.
UweSchmidt 13y ago
Same experience here. It's just barely good enough to claim the space of 'technically correct OS crypto implementation', thereby discouraging alternative efforts.
jagermo 13y ago
Agreed. Its simply not easy enough to use so I could recommend it to my friends with lesser it knowledge. However I have hopes for projects like MailPile (https://www.mailpile.is/ https://www.mailpile.is/)
dublinben 13y ago
If you haven't used Enigmail with Thunderbird, then you wouldn't know how easy it is to use GPG.
- mkesper 13y ago
  Although Enigmail still has some rough edges to be honest!
technomancy 13y ago
I started using GPG seriously once the "easypg" integration landed in Emacs 23. When you open a .gpg file it prompts for your passphrase and decrypts transparently, and when saving a new .gpg file it prompts you with a list from which you can select recipients to encrypt to. The integration with Emacs mail clients is fantastic too; just M-x mml-secure-sign or M-x mml-secure-encrypt when composing, and incoming messages with signatures are typically checked for you. This totally changed the way I used GPG. (from "not at all" to "every day")
- stinkytaco 13y ago
  I'm working through the irony of your finding GPG easier to use once it landed in emacs. I mean... Emacs for God's sake. In all honesty, however, part of the "difficulty" of GPG is really by design. You need to be deliberate about signing and encrypting because security should be a careful and deliberate act. If you're hoping for the program to take care of it transparently, you're probably not being safe enough. At least Emacs requires you to go through an explicit process. As you have to do with everything in Emacs.
  - velis_vel 13y ago
    > You need to be deliberate about signing and encrypting because security should be a careful and deliberate act. Why? You don't have to be 'deliberate' about encrypting when you're using SSH or HTTPS.
    - stinkytaco 13y ago
      True, but we're putting a lot of trust in third parties in that situation, no? HTTPS requires us to say "sure Verisign [or insert authority here], I believe you." If I'm doing that, why not just trust Google? Why use email encryption at all? SSH is more in our control, but it's still trusting a third party (a server) and it still requires a deliberate act to set up and use (unlike HTTPS).

codex 13y ago

Changes to Gmail made by a couple of engineers would so more to protect privacy than GNU ever could.

Joeboy 13y ago
How?
- RamiK 13y ago
  Client side encryption\decryption(can be done in javascript) with Gmail storing and passing nothing but encrypted data they themselves have no means of reading. Of course, that would mean Google has no means of directing ads based on content so they would have no incentive to run Gmail in the first place...
technomancy 13y ago
Right, as if Gmail would even exist without GNU.
- clarry 13y ago
  What does Gmail require GNU for?
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Assuming sincerity: much of the technical stack is based on GNU tools, projects, libraries, etc.
mkesper 13y ago
What? Gmail and privacy in one sentence? How does that fit?

tptacek 13y ago

So many people seem enamored of the idea of building software to protect users from NSA, and respond by designing new cryptosystems. These efforts invariably fail, because crypto is very hard, and professional crypto requires 10x verification (particularly at the design stage) as it does implementation. It baffles me that nobody has instead picked up the challenge of taking the PGP/GPG cryptosystem and making it more usable. That seems like an incredibly valuable project that also makes great use of the skills of the sorts of people that tend to want to work on privacy software. Paradoxically, the more you know about crypto, the less inclined you usually are to build new crypto.

e1ven 13y ago
I've been working on using GPG behind-the-scenes, so I can speak to a few reasons why it might not be used more frequently. 1) GPG is -terrible- to use as a library. There are a lot of wrappers for various languages. Almost most all of them call the gpg executable, and scrape it's input. This is crazy-town loony-toons. In theory, gpgme is supposed to be the solution.. But gpgme ends up calling the binary itself in many cases! 2) GPG assumes you want to use the whole ecosystem. GPG is sort of a mega-framework. It assumes you want to do everything the GPG way - Use gpg subkeys, keyservers, WOT, Import keys to a central keychain, etc. I've been able to go through with options flags and disable things I don't want, but it's all opt-out, not opt-in. 3) Because of 1 and 2, you can't run GPG entirely in memory. It writes a lot of files to the filesystem.. I've been bypassing this by running in ramdisks with ephemeral directories, but it's a PITA. 4) 2.1 has been in the works.. FOREVER. The first betas of gpg 2.1 were in 2010.. I understand they want to get this right, but that's a really really really log dev-cycle. I donated to the crowdfunding, and I hope it helps get gpg out sooner. GPG 2.1 is the first stable gpg release that includes ECC support (specifically, DJB's 25519). This is a really really big feature, that a lot of people have been waiting for. In any event, I like GPG, and I'm using GPG because it's been hardened, and I'm not smart enough to do my own crypto. But GPG doesn't make itself easy to integrate.
- pyre 13y ago
  > There are a lot of wrappers for various languages. Almost most all of them call the gpg executable, and scrape it's input. This is crazy-town loony-toons. > In theory, gpgme is supposed to be the solution.. But gpgme ends up calling the binary itself in many cases! I've heard of this many times, but is there a good reason behind this? Are there extra security considerations behind making this a shared library? Is it just "not the focus of development" much in the same way that changing the GIMP UI was always "off the table" for the longest time because the devs didn't want to do it?

miga 13y ago

2^2^2 years protecting privacy, that is!

iso-8859-1 13y ago
From now on it will never again not matter if you evaluate that expression from left to right or right to left :)