6 ms·

When I ask people for their e-mail address, they give it to me. When I ask them to verify their pgp key, it's less easy. How could the verification of the key

by nodata 12y ago

When I ask people for their e-mail address, they give it to me. When I ask them to verify their pgp key, it's less easy. How could the verification of the key be built into the address they give me? Something DNSSEC based I guess.

tptacek 12y ago
Yes. DNSSEC. Because what we need is a trusted arbiter, and who better to fulfill that role than the governments of the US, or whatever country happens to own the TLD I use?
- mentat 12y ago
  Governments, always trustworthy, especially for their own citizens.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Well, it's at least better than X500. With DNSSEC you only have to trust one government, not all of them. And you can also get more than one domain, in more than one TLD. Not very practical for automatic verification, but for surviving a manual verification several governments would have to collude against you. I still think that there must be something better. But I'm probably not good enough to create it.
jimktrains2 12y ago
Why is it not easy to verify a key (fingerprint)? Put it on a business card with the email address or read it over the phone? Also, DNSSEC isn't much more secure than our current CA system.
- Tomte 12y ago
  Now your collection of business cards is susceptible to tampering (no cryptographic authentication!). Do you never leave your collected business cards unattended at a conference or trade fair? Possible, if you put them into your shirt pocket. Do you store them in a vault lomg-term? Probably not. Is it impossible to impersonate you, either with a human sound-alike or by voice generation software? If you want perfect security against everyone, it quickly spirals out of control. You should probably remove the wallpapers in your house regularly and inspect what's underneath. ;-) I'm not entirely serious here, but I'm surprised at the optimism about what the individual can possibly achieve.
  - frabbit 12y ago
    "Now your collection of business cards is susceptible to tampering (no cryptographic authentication!)." You are missing the part where it was suggested that the recipient of the business card telephones you and asks to verify the fingerprint.
    - Tomte 12y ago
      You are missing both the "or" in his sentence (i.e. he describes alternatives, not cumulative measures) and my retort to the verification by phone.
    - frabbit 12y ago
      In response to Tomte's criticism, this all boils down to the certification level http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article9/pgp-signature-infos http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article9/pgp-signature-infos 1) A fingerprint on a possibly compromised business card == 0 2) A fingerprint verified by phoning someone == 1 etc, And associated with that independently is of course the level of trust. Sorry Tomte for not replying immediately to your message, but I've posted too much on this apparently.
  - jimktrains2 12y ago
    I was imply it was a person-to-person handing of a business card and that if it wasn't then it could be handled via the phone (which you would need from something other than the business card). But, yes, I didn't explain that as well as I could have.
bradleyjg 12y ago
Either you need a trusted third party or you need to pass something that looks like (at best): 4UpbRAXYMgrESrAwiLPYymNNni1hwyL2JEK7zz2SN52t You could do that by printing it on a business card or reading it over the phone, and then the other guy is going to have to type it in somewhere. The reason trusted third party keeps on coming up, despite all the myriad fundamental problems, is exactly because slinging that around is so unattractive.
- bostik 12y ago
  I've seen business cards with PGP fingerprints encoded as QR codes. That's a pretty neat idea.
  - nodata 12y ago
    Except you never notice when someone switches the QR code, as Tomte says.
    - bostik 12y ago
      Which is a very good point indeed.
- acqq 12y ago
  There IS a nicer way to present fingerprints to be much more human readable: map every few bytes to the whole dictionary word. There is a RFC for that: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1751.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1751.txt
leni536 12y ago
"Hi, my email is john@doe.com and I'm johndoe on keybase.io" could work.

by nodata 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago

Yes. DNSSEC. Because what we need is a trusted arbiter, and who better to fulfill that role than the governments of the US, or whatever country happens to own the TLD I use?

mentat 12y ago
Governments, always trustworthy, especially for their own citizens.
marcosdumay 12y ago
Well, it's at least better than X500. With DNSSEC you only have to trust one government, not all of them. And you can also get more than one domain, in more than one TLD. Not very practical for automatic verification, but for surviving a manual verification several governments would have to collude against you. I still think that there must be something better. But I'm probably not good enough to create it.

jimktrains2 12y ago

Why is it not easy to verify a key (fingerprint)? Put it on a business card with the email address or read it over the phone? Also, DNSSEC isn't much more secure than our current CA system.

Tomte 12y ago
Now your collection of business cards is susceptible to tampering (no cryptographic authentication!). Do you never leave your collected business cards unattended at a conference or trade fair? Possible, if you put them into your shirt pocket. Do you store them in a vault lomg-term? Probably not. Is it impossible to impersonate you, either with a human sound-alike or by voice generation software? If you want perfect security against everyone, it quickly spirals out of control. You should probably remove the wallpapers in your house regularly and inspect what's underneath. ;-) I'm not entirely serious here, but I'm surprised at the optimism about what the individual can possibly achieve.
- frabbit 12y ago
  "Now your collection of business cards is susceptible to tampering (no cryptographic authentication!)." You are missing the part where it was suggested that the recipient of the business card telephones you and asks to verify the fingerprint.
  - Tomte 12y ago
    You are missing both the "or" in his sentence (i.e. he describes alternatives, not cumulative measures) and my retort to the verification by phone.
  - frabbit 12y ago
    In response to Tomte's criticism, this all boils down to the certification level http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article9/pgp-signature-infos http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article9/pgp-signature-infos 1) A fingerprint on a possibly compromised business card == 0 2) A fingerprint verified by phoning someone == 1 etc, And associated with that independently is of course the level of trust. Sorry Tomte for not replying immediately to your message, but I've posted too much on this apparently.
- jimktrains2 12y ago
  I was imply it was a person-to-person handing of a business card and that if it wasn't then it could be handled via the phone (which you would need from something other than the business card). But, yes, I didn't explain that as well as I could have.

bradleyjg 12y ago

Either you need a trusted third party or you need to pass something that looks like (at best): 4UpbRAXYMgrESrAwiLPYymNNni1hwyL2JEK7zz2SN52t You could do that by printing it on a business card or reading it over the phone, and then the other guy is going to have to type it in somewhere. The reason trusted third party keeps on coming up, despite all the myriad fundamental problems, is exactly because slinging that around is so unattractive.

bostik 12y ago
I've seen business cards with PGP fingerprints encoded as QR codes. That's a pretty neat idea.
- nodata 12y ago
  Except you never notice when someone switches the QR code, as Tomte says.
  - bostik 12y ago
    Which is a very good point indeed.
acqq 12y ago
There IS a nicer way to present fingerprints to be much more human readable: map every few bytes to the whole dictionary word. There is a RFC for that: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1751.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1751.txt

leni536 12y ago

"Hi, my email is john@doe.com and I'm johndoe on keybase.io" could work.