13 ms·

GPG and Me

588 points by jashkenas 12y ago

orblivion 12y ago
How long would it take to vet something new? I don't know a lot about crypto but I get the sense that GPG is the gold standard for now. I agree that the interface is awful (and I feel bad for saying that after having learned of Werner Koch's financial situation) and it needs to be replaced. I wonder if some of the guts can be retained to avoid the bugs that come from starting from scratch?
secfirstmd 12y ago
As someone who trains human rights defenders and journalists on this stuff...I couldn't agree more. Often things end up being an unfortunate tradeoff between trying to get PGP working for people and having to settle for something less. Particularly in the developing world, which lower computer literacy rates - this is a significant problem. To be fair, at least Whisper Systems and the Guardian Project are doing great work to try to make encryption in various implementations work better for the average user. And let's be fair, groups like these and the LiberationTech community runs on a shoestring in comparison to even one large commercial tool.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  For people like this I write a simple shell script that abstracts away all the complexities and shitty UI. Never tried working directly with libgcrypt, I just let the regular gpg application handle it. Decrypting incoming mail automatically, checking to make sure outgoing is encrypted before sending and even regenerating keys and signing them is just a few shell commands you can script away. Projects like Tails should have this instead of big clunky GUIs.
  - secfirstmd 12y ago
    Interesting. Are you thinking of making the script publically available? I'm sure a lot of people would benefit from it.
    - deleted 12y ago
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    - deleted 12y ago
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    - PinnBrain 12y ago
      I was thinking the opposite--most shell scripts seem to exist to show off arcane knowledge rather than document a task in the most straightforward way possible.
    - pakled_engineer 12y ago
      It's a hacky shell script for OSX to make the process almost invisible to the user without using in-house mail servers or writing network facing daemons. When users launch their mail app it also launches the script (and mail console applescript) that command line fetches mail, decrypts and inserts into mail.app db, looks through msgs for new public keys and extracts them, updates contacts automatically with GoogleCL and gpgtools, then starts offline mail client to view/reply as they normally would. The script then fetches outgoing mail, gpgtools encrypts it according to destination, verifies it and sends. GPG key ID is automatically inserted into contacts https://code.google.com/p/googlecl/ https://code.google.com/p/googlecl/ so when the user deletes a contact the script reads the KeyID and removes it from the keyring as well. It had to be Google contacts it wasn't my decision. Nobody wanted to change their mail app workflow and they couldn't figure out gpgtools/gpg suite so this poor scheme was devised but it works. The janky part comes when the script checks mail console logs to detect no connection errors when users req to fetch new mail (and suppress popup notifications of this) so they don't have to push a second button to do it outside set intervals that fetch automatically. For some reason it was important that no other buttons existed to fetch new mail. There's probably a Claws Mail plugin that can be written to accomplish all this too if users were willing to switch apps, mutt will do most of it automatically and can be abstracted to make it invisible, or script OpenSMTPD to do this.
jvehent 12y ago
I'm eagerly waiting for something better to come up. There hasn't been anything satisfying so far, so I keep encrypting truly confidential communication with GPG, and it gets the job done.
diyorgasms 12y ago
The old adage is that perfect is the enemy of good enough, but the author is claiming that GPG isn't even good enough. I have to somewhat disagree. While the ideal product in this space would be as easy to use as clicking a 'Like' button, and just as ubiquitous, GPG works well enough for now. The most sensitive use case for GPG has to be sending correspondence that, if decrypted, could put you in severe physical danger. If the choice is between life and death, relative freedom or torture in some black site dungeon, the choice is clear. Using GPG is preferable to death or torture. This doesn't exactly seem like a ringing endorsement, but if these are the stakes, then you are probably willing to read the equivalent of 40% of Fahrenheit 451 to be secure. You are probably willing to learn to practice good opsec. It would be fantastic if GPG were displaced by something equally trustworthy and secure, but more user-friendly, and I look forward to the day that happens. But I think that GPG is the best we have, and we should be appreciative of that.
- sparaker 12y ago
  I use GPG often and it gets the work done. It might be the author is not happy with the long process of using GPG and the shortcomings of the documentation. I think if GPG is integrated with more applications, it might have a lot more users.
- ddlatham 12y ago
  Using X is preferable to death or torture. That's what I call faint praise.
  - lightbritefight 12y ago
    faint? I'd rather read 100 pages of man than die. Seems like a meager price to ensure another 70 years of life.
    - monochromatic 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise
decasteve 12y ago
I appreciate the sentiment overall but I have the exact opposite reaction when somebody emails me with a GPG signed or encrypted email. I immediately think it's great that somebody actually cares enough to voluntarily use it. That the contents of the email are deemed important enough that they don't want it sent in the clear.
- obituary_latte 12y ago
  Curious as to how often this happens? I suspect had I ever received email signed, I would be excited too. But I think it might be due at least in part to the novelty of it. I'd bet moxie gets more than the average user and perhaps maybe even is a bit...jaded isn't the right word, but being entrenched in crypto and knowing the importance and knowing the barrier to entry...overwhelmed. Not by the process, but by the hill yet to climb.
Nanzikambe 12y ago
As a member of the encrypt-everything clique I have to say, though Moxie has a point, Gnupg is infinitely better than alternative of nothing at all. Until someone comes up with a solution that preserves its power and flexibility and marries it with a functional UX -- I shall keep using it
- StavrosK 12y ago
  I kinda like the solution of embedding public keys in email addresses: name+8znBcmtXJ2ZeSn7fWVCGfpQI9HnJH1pNBPK397SGrT8=@gmail.com Sure, you'll never actually tell someone this, but it's short enough to copy/paste.
  - sarciszewski 12y ago
    With modern ECC this is actually feasible.
    - Ar-Curunir 12y ago
      Isn't IBE quite slow? And also it requires a third party for keygen and so on.
      - sarciszewski 12y ago
        What is IBE and who said anything about it? I was talking about EdDSA.
        Ar-Curunir 12y ago
        IBE is Identity Based Encryption, and it allows you to use your identity (name, email, etc.) as your public key. There's nothing special about EdDSA compared to other digital signature schemes. EDIT: Oh, I realize you were saying that ECC allows much shorter public keys than most signature schemes.
    - StavrosK 12y ago
      Yeah, that's an actual ECC public key in my example above.
loteck 12y ago
When (if?) Google's End-to-End matures, it would be a game-changer for a lot of the less savvy users of GPG that I know. https://github.com/google/end-to-end https://github.com/google/end-to-end
jchrisa 12y ago
Is there a list of credible web of trust implementations with installed bases? Is there anything on that list using new Html5 crypto plus IETF JOSE?
- rlpb 12y ago
  > Is there a list of credible web of trust implementations with installed bases? I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but Debian developers are required to have their keys signed by a number of other Debian developers. So there is a comprehensive web of trust amongst them. You can get the entire set of public keys from the "debian-keyring" package, assuming you trust your OS (and you use Debian or a derivative). And if you want to be signed into the strong set, find and ask a Debian developer (you probably have one reasonably local to you).
  - jchrisa 12y ago
    Debian is a good answer, but I meant alternatives to GPG, hopefully using modern crypto. Maybe Talko or some of the other secure comm apps? Anything open?
markwakeford 12y ago
I am curious as to to know what mail clients people are using with GPG. In OSX I am not a big fan of the native mail client at all but it seems thats the only approach if you want to use GPG. I am currently on a quest to find a decent mail client that looks good and works well and I am currently trialling Airmail 2 but its GPG support is buggy at best.
- stadeschuldt 12y ago
  I have been using Thunderbird (with Enigmail plugin) for over a decade now. Never had any issues.
  - Nelson69 12y ago
    Other than using an email client application rather than a web application. Enigmail is good though.
- majika 12y ago
  I used Thunderbird and Enigmail for a year or so. I later moved to Evolution for the better GPG experience (no flickering on opening the message as there is with Enigmail) and better GNOME integration. I used Evolution for another year, but its rough edges wore me down; I had to get in the habit of closing it if I wasn't using it, because it would noticeably slow my system down. It would take at least 5 seconds to open. Parts of the UI would often lock up and need a reset by switching between the panes. I've been using Claws Mail for the past few months. It's simple, fast and stable, and GPG support is fine. That's all I need. It sucks for reading and writing HTML emails, but I'm okay with that. Parts of the UI are still rough (e.g. the main window isn't responsive while the "sending" dialog is open), but it's less worse than Evolution.
- elangelcentral 12y ago
  Thunderbird & Enigmail. 7/10 would encrypt again.
- justinludwig 12y ago
  Mailpile (https://www.mailpile.is/ https://www.mailpile.is/). It's pretty bare-bones as far as a mail client goes, but it gets the job done.
Uhhrrr 12y ago
>When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. This is an interesting case where a barrier to entry makes discourse less valuable. Perhaps the barrier makes people feel like they have to prepare a short speech in order to make the effort worthwhile. I certainly would rather converse with most people than listen to one minute speeches from them.
- chralieboy 12y ago
  If you ready on, you'll see that his gripe isn't with the effort put into decrypting, but the subset of people who voluntarily use GPG.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    Still, I don't think people should stop using it.
  - SquidLord 12y ago
    Ironically unsaid: "People like myself for twenty years and nothing to sell."
  - Uhhrrr 12y ago
    I'm talking about the effort the sender has to put into encrypting.
AceJohnny2 12y ago
This is a very interesting point, all the more interesting that it takes someone with Moxie's clout for the message to come out. I've been in and out of the "GPG everything!" group over the years, and I definitely agree that GPG is a pain to use. I always figured this was because of the lack of proper frontends, and was hoping for the major influx of funding a couple weeks back would help it make progress in usability and infrastructure, but Moxie says that it's obsolete at its core. But if we're to replace it, the replacement has to not only be at least as secure, but also standardized and embeddable. A webapp or Chrome extension (which Google's End-to-End is) won't make the cut.
- secfirstmd 12y ago
  Mailvelope has made some strong efforts in this area. Though only as an extension.
diafygi 12y ago
It seems that the biggest problem with encryption in general is that of incentives. Great UX takes lots of design and iteration, which means someone has to pay for all those designers and front end devs. However, when you want good encryption, user experience always comes after security, which means you spend the majority of your resources on the security, not the design. So, we end up with great security and terrible user experience. It's (painfully) rational. Sure, every once in a while you have good security luck out and land a great designer (TextSecure), but that's extremely rare. The vast majority of security teams don't value design as much as security because they don't have the incentive to. So how do we fix the incentives? Can we? Should we?
- kevan 12y ago
  I think part of the solution is to get security teams to recognize that good user experience is a part of secure design. If the interface allows users to make mistakes that compromise security then the software has failed. You can blame users for making mistakes and tell them to read book-length manpages but that doesn't solve the problem. Most users don't want a swiss army knife and directions, they want a complete solution to a specific problem.
- saidajigumi 12y ago
  > However, when you want good encryption, user experience always comes after security I'm going to throw down a gauntlet: encryption design that doesn't start with designing for the human users is already fundamentally broken. Why? Because it cannot represent a solid system. This isn't machines in the Matrix talking to one another: the needs of the human users are the only thing that matters. Combine that with the past few decades of experience in software encryption systems, and we realize that this is hard to achieve. The non-adoption and misuse of GPG that Moxie speaks of, the train-wreck of passwords, and so on. It really feels like we've hit a wall, where there are no significant gains to be had unless these design problems are taken seriously. "Perfect" cryptosystems that have major real-world usability flaws are in fact worthless. Implementing new systems of this kind is a waste of effort and a disservice to everyone who vitally needs the services of a robust encryption infrastructure.
zmanian 12y ago
GPG is an immense failure from the point of protecting person to person communications. It is largely a success in verifying the identities of the software developers. The entire Debian ecosystem relies on GPG in largely successful ways. Peter Todd suggests that PGP drop encrypted communications as a goal and focus only on identity and authentication. It appears the PGP just can't be bootstrapped into modernity from a communication point of view. The only major innovation in authentication and identity has been threshold signatures which GPG could support.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > Peter Todd suggests that PGP drop encrypted communications as a goal and focus only on identity and authentication. Identity and authentication are the biggest reason that PGP hasn't caught on with non-technical users - the web-of-trust is necessary to do distributed identity and authentication properly (under the current model), and the importance of out-of-band verification can be hard to explain. Authentication (as opposed to authorization) is hard, even without factoring in state adversaries. The fact that the web-of-trust hasn't succeeded doesn't mean that another model won't, but I don't think it makes sense for PGP to throw out the one goal it already does incredibly well (securing communications) in order to focus on the biggest problem we haven't been able to solve in 20 years.
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    WoT works well for some things like #bitcoin-otc IRC trading channel but still most users aren't checking sigs. I like how they wanted to completely remove identifying info and similar signature schemes from signify http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify
  - zmanian 12y ago
    It isn't clear that we should want PGP to succeed from a communication point of view. It's clear that PGP has succeeded in protecting communications of a some subset of users for the last 20 years. Because of the lack of forward secrecy, it isn't clear that this would scale and how common key theft is. My opinion is basically GPG for identity and Axolotl for comms.
napoleond 12y ago
I'm not too sure. I am skeptical about the reality of replacing email any time soon, and more skeptical that a viable alternative for end-to-end encryption for email will present itself. If those two pessimistic assumptions hold true, then we're stuck with trying to make PGP easier to use. It's easier said than done, of course (I've tried and failed) but here's one way it could work: http://davidnoel.ca/specifying-a-pgp-client-that-your-grandmother-could-use/ http://davidnoel.ca/specifying-a-pgp-client-that-your-grandm...
- vog 12y ago
  There's an interesting project that tries to replace smartphone IM application with an open alternative which builds upon the email infrastructure: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/ http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/ That could be taken as a starting point for how to make things more smooth for users.
moxie 12y ago
A lot of the comments I've been getting are in the genre of "well... but GPG works." Yes, GPG is a powerful tool that makes some encrypted communication possible. But is it really "working" if it's the tool we've had for the past 20 years, and we still ended up in a world where surveillance is so ubiquitous and privacy is so rare? Having used GPG, it seems more likely to me that there are only ~50k GPG users in the world because of the product, not because of weak desire or need for private communication. I'm not suggesting that there's anything "better," but that it's really sad there isn't. GPG isn't ever going to be anything other than what it is now, and I don't think that's the future we want for ourselves. We could try to slap a GUI on top of it, but I don't believe great products are made that way. Good UX requires thinking about interactions all the way down to the protocol. The good news is that GPG has such a small legacy install base (literally on the order of ~50k users), that there's no reason to maintain compatibility with OpenPGP. When building new products, we can start fresh with modern cryptography, a modern protocol, and a modern design philosophy.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  You know you're one of only a few people in the world who is in a position to do that, right? Anyone else would (rightfully!) get torn to shreds on HN by tptacek or yourself. And I say "rightfully" because it is very likely that other people would screw up some central aspect to the security of any new product that claims security. It's not just that, though. Anyone else with your knowledge but no standing would be scorched for saying what you just said. "Throw away the one thing that has proven to be secure and write our own protocol" doesn't go hand in hand with "serious cryptographers trust what this person is saying." The truth is probably that either you do this or nobody will. You should. The world would be better for it.
  - click170 12y ago
    Is there a kick starter page for this cause that I can contribute to? Because I would. I'm not going to back just any crypto project, but with the right people leading the charge I would get behind it.
tptacek 12y ago
I don't want GPG to get in the way of better, newer options. But even less do I want to read more about people burned by the incompetent engineering of lesser new alternatives. Can we just declare a flag day and switch to TextSecure?
- Ao7bei3s 12y ago
  Yes, but not unless: 1. there are full-featured native clients for computers that aren't smartphones 2. it works with anonymous accounts, without needing a phone number 3. federation is open Right now, TextSecure can't even fully replace OTR (for secure IMs), let alone GPG (for email <- real work).
  - whyever 12y ago
    To replace email, we might want named conversations as well.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Yea, remember that even in 2020 you would still be much better off using well designed 1990s crypto than things like Telegram or Cryptocat. And TextSecure is not a true replacement.
- edwintorok 12y ago
  How about Chatsecure with Jabber and OTP? Isn't that a viable alternative too? Doesn't require you to use a phone number, so it works nicely on tablets or desktops (pidgin+otr), etc.
deleted 12y ago
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A_COMPUTER 12y ago
>When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. >the email was written by someone who would voluntarily use GPG. >There just seems to be something particular about people who try GPG and conclude that it’s a realistic path to introducing private communication in their lives for casual correspondence with strangers. Is it just me or is the implication here that anybody who uses PGP is usually a kook of some kind?
- danudey 12y ago
  I think the implication is that GPG is so pathologically complex, awkward, cumbersome, and broken that getting GPG-encrypted e-mail means it's from someone who's so paranoid/obsessive that they encrypt all e-mail, even to strangers (when possible?) even when the tool is so awful as to discourage the average individual.
  - A_COMPUTER 12y ago
    >someone who's so paranoid/obsessive that they encrypt all e-mail, even to strangers That's pretty much what I meant, clearly somebody didn't like me bringing it up. I wonder why. I have to use PGP every day for my job, I don't feel like a paranoid/obsessive, so I resent the implication a little bit. It's a clunky piece of software, but it hasn't caused me nearly as much suffering as Lotus Notes.
    - fensipens 12y ago
      Don't bother. While I have much sympathy for the average user and see several problems with PGP, the gen-pop here is creating way too much buzz around a tool that is working reasonably well. And with respect to the PGP-user / character link.. this is just beyond stupidity.
  - deleted 12y ago
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fensipens 12y ago
These rants are not very useful until one of the two geniuses (Green, Moxie) can come up with a comfortable solution to the core problem of key distribution. And given that nowadays Green seems completely consumed by twitter while Moxie believes in fixing whatsapp, I wouldn't hold my breath.
- mbubb 12y ago
  Could you further ID "Green"? Do not know who that is. Edit. Matthew Green?
  - fensipens 12y ago
    Matthew D. Green, the "expert in applied cryptography and network security" who was invited to take a look at the Snowden-stash but declined because he was scared. Which is funny, because since Snowden he became some sort of web-celebrity always ready to tweet and comment on every little crypto/security issue.
acqq 12y ago
Note that the article author is the author of TextSecure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure It's not surprising that he prefers TextSecure over GPG in the context he explains: "introducing private communication(...) for casual correspondence with strangers." It's obvious that author prefers his chat for that. Still there are scenarios where the GPG wins over chat. But it's also true, most people would make serious errors if they'd try to use GPG.
- eyeareque 12y ago
  I don't think he is trying to push the use of text secure over PGP, he has admitted that there isn't a replacement for PGP yet. He is just a forward thinker, hoping for a future where strong encryption is ubiquitous.. and not the state where PGP is today.
eliteraspberrie 12y ago
There are a couple alternatives to GPG being developed right now. One is reop (https://github.com/tedu/reop https://github.com/tedu/reop). The cryptography is done by libsodium and it is well-written. Another is NetPGP (http://www.netpgp.com/ http://www.netpgp.com/). The cryptography is done by the OpenPGP SDK. The NetPGP code is well-written but the OpenPGP SDK code looks like OpenSSL. Both are promising and deserve everyone's support.
- stormbrew 12y ago
  Reop looks exciting, perhaps as being exactly what a "fresh start" should look like. I see the section on not supporting key revocation at all and it worries me, because it seems to me there should be some way to do so. But perhaps the key here is that this particular tool is not trying to solve the key distribution problem, which is a whole other kettle of fish? It is possible that PGP fails partly because it tries to do both. But that does mean that a solution still needs to be found for that problem, even if you switch to reop.
- fab13n 12y ago
  > OpenPGP SDK code looks like OpenSSL. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that intelligence services sabotage open source crypto projects by helping turning their codebase into an arcane mess, which scares away the million eyeballs which are supposed to make bugs shallow. I've worked on OpenSSL quite a long time ago; I thought they kept it so messy in order to sell their expertise through consulting. At that time, only tinfoil hat folks would have believed that spooks would spend millions sabotaging everything and anything crypto-related... Now I believe that infiltrating open-source SSL / TLS / PGP developper communities is at least as strong a priority as infiltrating terrorist communities for them, so I'm utterly convinced they're trying, and I'd rather bet they succeed.
mbubb 12y ago
Articles (and the attendant discussions) like this are incredibly useful for me. I really appreciate HN for things like this. Recently signed up for keybase to check it out. Read critiques (mostly negative) but jumped in anyway as I am hungry for something like it. I do not have a deep grasp of the arguments but I see the 'lipstick on a pig' criticism of slapping a gui on an aging infrastructure. The practical problem with keybase for me is finding people to test it out with. I've added folks who don't know me and my friends couldn't care less. There is a blindspot for me - I use ssh and rsa on a daily basis, many times a day. I do not know what I would do if I has to switch to something else. I do not know how to evaluate security options and know to know one is better than another. We have very good infosec people in my company and have a standing weekly meeting to vet my sysops doings. In any event will check out Whisper Systems and keep refreshing this discussion...
- L_Rahman 12y ago
  Just signed up for keybase and in the same position. Don't know anyone on the service to actually use it with. Interested in testing it out with me?
  - eastbayjake 12y ago
    If no one's taken you up on that, here's a message for you: -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: Keybase OpenPGP v2.0.7 Comment: https://keybase.io/crypto https://keybase.io/crypto wcFMA5S7hsT55Ka3AQ/+K3YTd9aLF70PcDuDzUSBwt42I4UJdASvSzU9ljJZhxmh xn/XgzfuPVEqi75jhI20SfKJetR867leishDNU/XrynFCyJcr0ax6Q6BQes/w94d ErmBchxcYwFumB0i0tWMygmCUKgpL7W5bC26gB4AUdoPhhdJQnHYwiLvEv+e1G6I wFEA2/WzJlB+K+4v782zF7RhZaTA6OXl0noL6Nsoi2V/yufD5qKVnolx3RSHzdTd 1bSdS7lTCIQzvDmuLYvkophBL6Vb6Qa8IdwkLVxt+akr/W4oOxLaEE14HxS05OTO bN0R5yXzNNI7RWfU4cB3JKUMSKLGB4cBf+jEj1WyGCm04/9I1XgnNqFULE4RfHwG t8mqS1oeetfKlrzEx7NkXVn7mvITiYUzeH+M/DaTlnp5+Nb1FgQK1U54emIgEpmR qaG9JYDxZBtmBQ2gb3RtXndZFWQh7YifqaDFsUkJl4cdjXZ69WccvFRr+Vr3Ow1O m19lrHAFj4XZtsS9C1PNBejpdcfANoWjG+9Eitd6iliAo4nCG9jUi/6mIWRuamcs OS2uAAWMe1ZrfhwwU/x2+/QM6eGKU43DBLy9lmyFj2UgZKW1UokQg7iAp3Wd0f+Z SBEXNFsM3rPoYVb29boUcJtkA4CpArH36kIBv45A9u1c14uTUVRreGeLe1pqrsXB wEwD5S1urhQzgBEBCACk1jR8gIaMRKCsl7ofIjGr8PrrOYVCkNtpWjGsNnq+SFkG SUUekwzB0MfRVSdrkfVk/7Axrm0YGWqW9v12aNrrRLe8Vs/VJU9r2RRBgI164YbI UDxlGBJZhNnG1BxPVt1en1nH9ceEw4yq15giSxRMOhtlmpdv6Y0HIWzhnAb+Hc68 rxFq74j2wEfkHkIYJV7cOZtXy9WF0WHVgi0wIyiDHvV84KTO5HUv2qA1uJiqt3UU phq+lmFr3DzH7mcz2vLBW8r1AeFOd9VtRNVPkLEaVIjlCPGTYgr0hCfUX+JSf6PN 1VSRdogjcBu5Cqui60Fz9RKQvPCpX0NAUJpEZ30H0sEQATqCbZ/PF7nEqVHAOoH4 FK+Q6cR4+8iArPnUjr0lP0KWaQDJBghbYqQ8aUX37NUJaih7wae1b5WyBBCtwilI GowCJXwiD0kd7xUns61MhNDSn2K2ZPifHptJcv5QvODLkoJSHP4ylqCa9SrzyFNR gpRk3I31NIxZd7M5PT8fepQ75qTOgZ/v8ZTEd0HbPpjjRNJ3hMtIo7nmzPk54aD7 182jBWbXhiYiTTYEExnGwq+uDHoQjtGGBQzJegqeNex/q3Ba7Lf5RCbfFXQy3aDj JGRY6rZCQFbtcym2fjxeT9lRmHHeXA400zeLXgbqmmAKAcQwBtQQIF4Cg/cDNItN 6o5Jov0+pAm/NKKRWIXGJErGXsi0iTqJyl0anasbrQH6dnEXNbbMslIOtDl9CtKR N5Y+x+vJJKsOQaT6dJmQHZ19RxW4tickEr6zEu6IhB8ooMGMAjdq+tpRAF4+qKyK /yWUTIpp14deORe3aK7Hu0mA6H9dxDfwNwvat3Iv8R7YbsILdp7sFBPBlVLRLoBp BlYe7Eqroe7dCLg+v9Uw3Hpbu0yp3/BY64H3Qj9f7X3HQ+6nHQ0oQNS6XcwvJnKo JTV8lO263q0P7+Pti05SSs4= =gLgR -----END PGP MESSAGE-----
lisper 12y ago
I'm working on a GPG replacement that is designed to be super-easy to use. Not quite ready for prime time but if any HNers would like a sneak preview drop me a line. Contact info is in my profile.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Reading this article over an unencrypted connection and viewing the resulting MITM attack is quite ironic: https://i.imgur.com/hXNGb5l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hXNGb5l.jpg GPG may be a failure, but HTTPS is not.
sixdimensional 12y ago
From what I have learned, security/cryptography is about protecting what needs to be protected for as long as is necessary (which is relative to the parties and data involved) - there is no such thing as "absolute" or "perfect" security/cryptography and probably never will be. Based on that statement, "good enough" is "good enough" relative to the value of what is being protected. From my personal experience, while difficult for use by ordinary users, GPG has proven "good enough" (if not better) for most common business/organizational/personal uses. That is not to say, that a better alternative/increased ease of use is not possible. Better alternatives are always possible (possibly hard), but it seems such an alternative has not yet presented itself. This leads me to believe that this is in fact an ongoing market and worldwide opportunity for those who have the skills to make alternatives real.
jms703 12y ago
breaking news! </sarcasm> ok. what's moxie selling next?
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aftbit 12y ago
I'm sick of "opinionated software". IMO it's code for "adding more settings is hard". I'd prefer "sane defaults" as an operating mode, and maybe burying confusing settings behind a warning screen like about:config in Firefox. Software that thinks it knows my use case better than I do is wrong.
- whyever 12y ago
  In crypto options are dangerous, so it makes a lot of sense to be opinionated.
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mmaunder 12y ago
GPG has been struggling with funding for some time now, but that's fixed: https://gigaom.com/2015/02/06/funds-flow-in-for-gnupg-author-after-article-reveals-his-plight/ https://gigaom.com/2015/02/06/funds-flow-in-for-gnupg-author... Also, to be fair, it's used widely by many infosec researchers/vendors/IC folks who know how it's done.
lucb1e 12y ago
> When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. I don't understand why. Did I glance over it, or is it not in the article? When I receive GPG encrypted email, I only have to enter my password and it gets decrypted. Simple as that. Same as when starting me email client, then too I have to enter a password to decrypt the login for the server. It takes only a moment really. I don't receive that much email from strangers anyway, but the times I get GPG encrypted email from a stranger it's never spam, so it's surely worth the approximately three seconds to enter that password. (For the curious, I use Thunderbird with Enigmail and kgpg as front-end to GnuPG.)
- jshholland 12y ago
  It's probably equivalent to receiving a letter written in green ink (British perception that letters written to media in green ink are more likely to be from what I'll charitably call fringe interestts)
JoelJacobson 12y ago
I think it's mainly GnuPG's fault. There is no API, so developers can't integrate it into their applications. The only way is to pass arguments to gpg binary and interpret the output on STDOUT using regexes. The "libraries" that exist for Python and other languages all work like this. That is why they require you to specify the "The path to the gpg executable." If GnuPG provided a real API, then there would be hope, because the actual OpenPGP specification isn't that bad if you only implement and use the bare-minimum features. This is one of the reasons my company developed support to deal with PGP signatures directly in PostgreSQL, without using GnuPG: https://github.com/trustly/bankapi/tree/master/debian/postgresql-pgcrypto-openpgp https://github.com/trustly/bankapi/tree/master/debian/postgr... It's a bit funny it's now actually safer/better/easier to use PostgreSQL instead of GnuPG if you are developing an application which uses PGP, as your only option is to pass input to the gpg executable and regex it's output, which is hackish and not suitable for production purposes.
tiatia 12y ago
Yes. This guy does not need GPG. But he needs a new haircut.
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antihero 12y ago
I as a fairly technical person fine GPG confusing, despite being shown how to use it several times, and still have no idea whether it's working properly or if anything is actually being secured with how I've got it set up. Also, seems centric on the dwindling population of people who actually use email clients.
bonn1 12y ago
Clever Marketing gig for TextSecure which has been rumbled by the third commentator on that page: > Okay, since you want to play in the same league as OpenPGP: where can I find the RFC describing TextSecure? How many independent implementations of the TextSecure protocol currently exist?
- whyever 12y ago
  There is Whatsapp, which is not compatible but uses the Axolotl protocol as well. You can find the protocol on github.
ianso 12y ago
Sorry but what is the actual point of this blog post? GPG is just one guy. Who's practically beggared himself writing and maintaining the tool. GPG is actually used by human rights activists, journalists etc. That, right there, is reason enough to celebrate it and NOT "kill it off". I think the massive pile-on this is creating is really dumb, to be honest. So Moxie thinks it could be done better; that's great. He's good enough that he can "show, not tell". Why waste time denigrating a project that's basically a labour of love for one guy that is actually tremendously important, even if it's "90's technology"? Old doesn't necessarily mean bad.
- DanBC 12y ago
  We need very good quality encryption software that is not really hard to use. PGP is impossible for many people to use correctly. That means there is a bunch of -- often insecure -- software to fill the gap. So the people who really need PGP/GPG have to struggle to use it and don't know if they've managed it or they use some other software instead that probably doesn't protect them.
- fab13n 12y ago
  It's not about GPG sucking; it's about the absence of anything sucking less than GPG. It's not about activists and journalists being (more or less) able to use GPG; it's about the fact that nobody who doesn't face as deadly a risk as them would bother to use GPG. I didn't feel any denigration reading him; rather, the statement that: * We have new crypto needs, in wake of revelations such as Snowden's; * GPG isn't an adequate answer to those needs, and isn't likely to evolve into one; * Tech people don't realize that GPG is unlikely to morph into an adequate solution, and therefore don't bother starting an alternative. Finally, I believe that a successful answer would rely on excellent UX and PR at least as much as sound crypto. I'm not aware that Moxie is an expert in these fields (although he might have more talents than I know), so it's not obvious that he's in a position of showing rather than telling.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  > Why waste time denigrating a project that's basically a labour of love for one guy that is actually tremendously important, even if it's "90's technology"? Old doesn't necessarily mean bad. In the world of crypto, where we've learned so much, yes old means bad. Almost always. Why denigrate GPG? Unfortunately, because the message that it's not good isn't being widely heard. How many NEW crypto projects are being created that start out by saying, "first we will use GPG"? I've seen lots. OK, you failed right there, right at the start. Don't do that. How many crypto geeks STILL spout rubbish about how the PKI is totally busted and the web of trust is the future? Way too many. WoT is sort of like the year of desktop Linux by now. It's just a bad joke that too many people won't let go of. The most serious and effective applied cryptographers I know about are all ignoring GPG and rolling new modern crypto protocols. I feel the same way as Moxie - if you build a product based on GPG then almost immediately you are less interesting than a project that's doing something new. And FWIW I have the same sinking feeling when I get a GPG encrypted email. Sometimes I don't read it immediately, I put it off. Sometimes I have to put it off because I'm not near my laptop. And when I decrypt it, inevitably I discover that I could have guessed the contents of the mail from the subject line and identity of the sender. The encryption was largely pointless to begin with. The future of encrypted messaging is not GPG. We need to collectively let it go.
motters 12y ago
I don't think that email is going to go away any time soon, so there doesn't appear to be a lot of alternative. I doubt that Moxie is suggesting that users send emails in plain text, so maybe email encryption needs to be reinvented.
zby 12y ago
For 20 years nobody cared about crypto - how is it surprising that we have what we have? For the future - progress does not come from just line of development, there needs to be many many experiments before we get good crypto. We need better UIs, and we also need many infrastructure improvements. I have not looked at the protocol itself - but it being flexible and having too many options is not really a problem - it is needed for the other layers built upon it to have space for experimentation. But the PGP related libs are really not good. I had once an idea for a Web of Trust related website - and I found out that there is no way to for example verify a signature without loading a full key-ring, that is loading all unrelated keys into the memory just to build the data structure used by the library. This is just one case - but it supports the thesis that the libs are a fossil from the last century. If we want better end user tools we need to give better libs for programmers to start the experiments.
escapologybb 12y ago
I'm not a programmer so I was hoping somebody could answer this question for me, why did Moxie choose to italicise the word python in this sentence: "Mailpile had to write 1400 lines of python code just to interface with a native GnuPG installation for basic operations, and it still isn’t rock solid."
- Johnny_Brahms 12y ago
  He means that you can do alot in 1400 lines of python, and if interfacing with GPG needs that much to be "not rock solid" there is something wrong.
Tharkun 12y ago
Creating a GPG alternative is hard. That's pretty much the only reason why it's still around. That, and the ubiquity of e-mail. Sending encrypted/signed e-mail with GPG isn't hard when you're using things like Enigmail. Maybe the GUI could be a little friendlier, I don't know, but the encryption part isn't hard. Key management, now that's hard. Not just in terms of usage, but in terms of explaining it to new users. On the one hand, both parties need to somehow exchange keys before they can communicate in a secure fashion. Doing this is hard, and if done wrong can leave you vulnerable to attack. That's why we verify key fingerprints. If there's an easy way to make this painless, I don't know it. Central authorities like what we've got with TLS/HTTPS are obviously a steaming pile of shite. Decentralized (like GPG) are difficult for users. What else is there? I don't know.
upofadown 12y ago
I think a major part of the solution is going to involve teaching people about public key cryptography in school. It isn't the sort of thing that anyone wants to bother to learn on their own. Without this essential understanding any attempt to get the general public to protect their privacy is doomed. Even if they somehow manage to go through the motions they are eventually going to do something to mess everything up if they don't know what they are doing. Some tasks require understanding. This is one of those tasks.
wuschel 12y ago
Well, that is certaily an understandable position. I am very happy that such a software exists in the open source community, as unpractical it might be. The trouble, however, does not start with the lack of UI design, or other impracticalities - for me it starts with the platform I choose to run a PGP type of software on. Would you trust your Iphone, Android, Microsoft/Linux/iOS/Lenovo/Dell/et cetera computer with "really sensitive, mission critical" data? I don't. "The paranoid will survive" is a good sentence to remember. So I better install that PGP-etc on a offline unit and decrypt encrypt my messages there.
radisb 12y ago
When I imagine a world with an easy to use encrypted email system such that anyone could transparently use, I cant avoid imagining either a world sunken in spam, or a world where each individual no matter their computer skills" would have to maintain anti-spam systems. So we are back to square one regarding mass adoption...
tanx 12y ago
I'm completely missing a discussion about federation. Sure TextSecure and iMessage solve UX in a great way. But what about business requirements that email/PGP does solve? More in our blog post here: https://blog.whiteout.io/2015/02/25/pgp-theres-life-in-the-old-dog-yet/ https://blog.whiteout.io/2015/02/25/pgp-theres-life-in-the-o...
bkeroack 12y ago
One of the problems is the constant mantra: "crypto is hard--leave it to the experts", discouraging new tools from being written. Crypto is hard but there's a big community out there to help with auditing the codebase and fixing issues once a project gains traction.
mark-r 12y ago
> “I send you the private key to communicate privately, right?” That could be fixed with a simple terminology change, call it the "secret" key rather than the "private" key.
contingencies 12y ago
Developer of phone-based crypto afterthoughts that give people a false sense of security and ignore the evidence that using phones is the worst thing you can do for privacy and security: "[my competitor] the most widely deployed message-oriented cryptography application in the open source world is crap". Well, yes and no. Forward secrecy is nice, but a world without forward secrecy and a workable standard when required is still arguably better than a world full of people throwing away insecure phones every six months while convincing themselves App1.2.3 makes them untouchably secure because n-marketing claims.

588 points by jashkenas 12y ago

How long would it take to vet something new? I don't know a lot about crypto but I get the sense that GPG is the gold standard for now. I agree that the interface is awful (and I feel bad for saying that after having learned of Werner Koch's financial situation) and it needs to be replaced. I wonder if some of the guts can be retained to avoid the bugs that come from starting from scratch?

secfirstmd 12y ago

As someone who trains human rights defenders and journalists on this stuff...I couldn't agree more. Often things end up being an unfortunate tradeoff between trying to get PGP working for people and having to settle for something less. Particularly in the developing world, which lower computer literacy rates - this is a significant problem. To be fair, at least Whisper Systems and the Guardian Project are doing great work to try to make encryption in various implementations work better for the average user. And let's be fair, groups like these and the LiberationTech community runs on a shoestring in comparison to even one large commercial tool.

pakled_engineer 12y ago
For people like this I write a simple shell script that abstracts away all the complexities and shitty UI. Never tried working directly with libgcrypt, I just let the regular gpg application handle it. Decrypting incoming mail automatically, checking to make sure outgoing is encrypted before sending and even regenerating keys and signing them is just a few shell commands you can script away. Projects like Tails should have this instead of big clunky GUIs.
- secfirstmd 12y ago
  Interesting. Are you thinking of making the script publically available? I'm sure a lot of people would benefit from it.
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  - PinnBrain 12y ago
    I was thinking the opposite--most shell scripts seem to exist to show off arcane knowledge rather than document a task in the most straightforward way possible.
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    It's a hacky shell script for OSX to make the process almost invisible to the user without using in-house mail servers or writing network facing daemons. When users launch their mail app it also launches the script (and mail console applescript) that command line fetches mail, decrypts and inserts into mail.app db, looks through msgs for new public keys and extracts them, updates contacts automatically with GoogleCL and gpgtools, then starts offline mail client to view/reply as they normally would. The script then fetches outgoing mail, gpgtools encrypts it according to destination, verifies it and sends. GPG key ID is automatically inserted into contacts https://code.google.com/p/googlecl/ https://code.google.com/p/googlecl/ so when the user deletes a contact the script reads the KeyID and removes it from the keyring as well. It had to be Google contacts it wasn't my decision. Nobody wanted to change their mail app workflow and they couldn't figure out gpgtools/gpg suite so this poor scheme was devised but it works. The janky part comes when the script checks mail console logs to detect no connection errors when users req to fetch new mail (and suppress popup notifications of this) so they don't have to push a second button to do it outside set intervals that fetch automatically. For some reason it was important that no other buttons existed to fetch new mail. There's probably a Claws Mail plugin that can be written to accomplish all this too if users were willing to switch apps, mutt will do most of it automatically and can be abstracted to make it invisible, or script OpenSMTPD to do this.

jvehent 12y ago

I'm eagerly waiting for something better to come up. There hasn't been anything satisfying so far, so I keep encrypting truly confidential communication with GPG, and it gets the job done.

diyorgasms 12y ago

The old adage is that perfect is the enemy of good enough, but the author is claiming that GPG isn't even good enough. I have to somewhat disagree. While the ideal product in this space would be as easy to use as clicking a 'Like' button, and just as ubiquitous, GPG works well enough for now. The most sensitive use case for GPG has to be sending correspondence that, if decrypted, could put you in severe physical danger. If the choice is between life and death, relative freedom or torture in some black site dungeon, the choice is clear. Using GPG is preferable to death or torture. This doesn't exactly seem like a ringing endorsement, but if these are the stakes, then you are probably willing to read the equivalent of 40% of Fahrenheit 451 to be secure. You are probably willing to learn to practice good opsec. It would be fantastic if GPG were displaced by something equally trustworthy and secure, but more user-friendly, and I look forward to the day that happens. But I think that GPG is the best we have, and we should be appreciative of that.

sparaker 12y ago
I use GPG often and it gets the work done. It might be the author is not happy with the long process of using GPG and the shortcomings of the documentation. I think if GPG is integrated with more applications, it might have a lot more users.
ddlatham 12y ago
Using X is preferable to death or torture. That's what I call faint praise.
- lightbritefight 12y ago
  faint? I'd rather read 100 pages of man than die. Seems like a meager price to ensure another 70 years of life.
  - monochromatic 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise

decasteve 12y ago

I appreciate the sentiment overall but I have the exact opposite reaction when somebody emails me with a GPG signed or encrypted email. I immediately think it's great that somebody actually cares enough to voluntarily use it. That the contents of the email are deemed important enough that they don't want it sent in the clear.

obituary_latte 12y ago
Curious as to how often this happens? I suspect had I ever received email signed, I would be excited too. But I think it might be due at least in part to the novelty of it. I'd bet moxie gets more than the average user and perhaps maybe even is a bit...jaded isn't the right word, but being entrenched in crypto and knowing the importance and knowing the barrier to entry...overwhelmed. Not by the process, but by the hill yet to climb.

Nanzikambe 12y ago

As a member of the encrypt-everything clique I have to say, though Moxie has a point, Gnupg is infinitely better than alternative of nothing at all. Until someone comes up with a solution that preserves its power and flexibility and marries it with a functional UX -- I shall keep using it

StavrosK 12y ago
I kinda like the solution of embedding public keys in email addresses: name+8znBcmtXJ2ZeSn7fWVCGfpQI9HnJH1pNBPK397SGrT8=@gmail.com Sure, you'll never actually tell someone this, but it's short enough to copy/paste.
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  With modern ECC this is actually feasible.
  - Ar-Curunir 12y ago
    Isn't IBE quite slow? And also it requires a third party for keygen and so on.
    - sarciszewski 12y ago
      What is IBE and who said anything about it? I was talking about EdDSA.
      - Ar-Curunir 12y ago
        IBE is Identity Based Encryption, and it allows you to use your identity (name, email, etc.) as your public key. There's nothing special about EdDSA compared to other digital signature schemes. EDIT: Oh, I realize you were saying that ECC allows much shorter public keys than most signature schemes.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    Yeah, that's an actual ECC public key in my example above.

loteck 12y ago

When (if?) Google's End-to-End matures, it would be a game-changer for a lot of the less savvy users of GPG that I know. https://github.com/google/end-to-end https://github.com/google/end-to-end

jchrisa 12y ago

Is there a list of credible web of trust implementations with installed bases? Is there anything on that list using new Html5 crypto plus IETF JOSE?

rlpb 12y ago
> Is there a list of credible web of trust implementations with installed bases? I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but Debian developers are required to have their keys signed by a number of other Debian developers. So there is a comprehensive web of trust amongst them. You can get the entire set of public keys from the "debian-keyring" package, assuming you trust your OS (and you use Debian or a derivative). And if you want to be signed into the strong set, find and ask a Debian developer (you probably have one reasonably local to you).
- jchrisa 12y ago
  Debian is a good answer, but I meant alternatives to GPG, hopefully using modern crypto. Maybe Talko or some of the other secure comm apps? Anything open?

markwakeford 12y ago

I am curious as to to know what mail clients people are using with GPG. In OSX I am not a big fan of the native mail client at all but it seems thats the only approach if you want to use GPG. I am currently on a quest to find a decent mail client that looks good and works well and I am currently trialling Airmail 2 but its GPG support is buggy at best.

stadeschuldt 12y ago
I have been using Thunderbird (with Enigmail plugin) for over a decade now. Never had any issues.
- Nelson69 12y ago
  Other than using an email client application rather than a web application. Enigmail is good though.
majika 12y ago
I used Thunderbird and Enigmail for a year or so. I later moved to Evolution for the better GPG experience (no flickering on opening the message as there is with Enigmail) and better GNOME integration. I used Evolution for another year, but its rough edges wore me down; I had to get in the habit of closing it if I wasn't using it, because it would noticeably slow my system down. It would take at least 5 seconds to open. Parts of the UI would often lock up and need a reset by switching between the panes. I've been using Claws Mail for the past few months. It's simple, fast and stable, and GPG support is fine. That's all I need. It sucks for reading and writing HTML emails, but I'm okay with that. Parts of the UI are still rough (e.g. the main window isn't responsive while the "sending" dialog is open), but it's less worse than Evolution.
elangelcentral 12y ago
Thunderbird & Enigmail. 7/10 would encrypt again.
justinludwig 12y ago
Mailpile (https://www.mailpile.is/ https://www.mailpile.is/). It's pretty bare-bones as far as a mail client goes, but it gets the job done.

Uhhrrr 12y ago

>When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. This is an interesting case where a barrier to entry makes discourse less valuable. Perhaps the barrier makes people feel like they have to prepare a short speech in order to make the effort worthwhile. I certainly would rather converse with most people than listen to one minute speeches from them.

chralieboy 12y ago
If you ready on, you'll see that his gripe isn't with the effort put into decrypting, but the subset of people who voluntarily use GPG.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Still, I don't think people should stop using it.
- SquidLord 12y ago
  Ironically unsaid: "People like myself for twenty years and nothing to sell."
- Uhhrrr 12y ago
  I'm talking about the effort the sender has to put into encrypting.

AceJohnny2 12y ago

This is a very interesting point, all the more interesting that it takes someone with Moxie's clout for the message to come out. I've been in and out of the "GPG everything!" group over the years, and I definitely agree that GPG is a pain to use. I always figured this was because of the lack of proper frontends, and was hoping for the major influx of funding a couple weeks back would help it make progress in usability and infrastructure, but Moxie says that it's obsolete at its core. But if we're to replace it, the replacement has to not only be at least as secure, but also standardized and embeddable. A webapp or Chrome extension (which Google's End-to-End is) won't make the cut.

secfirstmd 12y ago
Mailvelope has made some strong efforts in this area. Though only as an extension.

diafygi 12y ago

It seems that the biggest problem with encryption in general is that of incentives. Great UX takes lots of design and iteration, which means someone has to pay for all those designers and front end devs. However, when you want good encryption, user experience always comes after security, which means you spend the majority of your resources on the security, not the design. So, we end up with great security and terrible user experience. It's (painfully) rational. Sure, every once in a while you have good security luck out and land a great designer (TextSecure), but that's extremely rare. The vast majority of security teams don't value design as much as security because they don't have the incentive to. So how do we fix the incentives? Can we? Should we?

kevan 12y ago
I think part of the solution is to get security teams to recognize that good user experience is a part of secure design. If the interface allows users to make mistakes that compromise security then the software has failed. You can blame users for making mistakes and tell them to read book-length manpages but that doesn't solve the problem. Most users don't want a swiss army knife and directions, they want a complete solution to a specific problem.
saidajigumi 12y ago
> However, when you want good encryption, user experience always comes after security I'm going to throw down a gauntlet: encryption design that doesn't start with designing for the human users is already fundamentally broken. Why? Because it cannot represent a solid system. This isn't machines in the Matrix talking to one another: the needs of the human users are the only thing that matters. Combine that with the past few decades of experience in software encryption systems, and we realize that this is hard to achieve. The non-adoption and misuse of GPG that Moxie speaks of, the train-wreck of passwords, and so on. It really feels like we've hit a wall, where there are no significant gains to be had unless these design problems are taken seriously. "Perfect" cryptosystems that have major real-world usability flaws are in fact worthless. Implementing new systems of this kind is a waste of effort and a disservice to everyone who vitally needs the services of a robust encryption infrastructure.

zmanian 12y ago

GPG is an immense failure from the point of protecting person to person communications. It is largely a success in verifying the identities of the software developers. The entire Debian ecosystem relies on GPG in largely successful ways. Peter Todd suggests that PGP drop encrypted communications as a goal and focus only on identity and authentication. It appears the PGP just can't be bootstrapped into modernity from a communication point of view. The only major innovation in authentication and identity has been threshold signatures which GPG could support.

chimeracoder 12y ago
> Peter Todd suggests that PGP drop encrypted communications as a goal and focus only on identity and authentication. Identity and authentication are the biggest reason that PGP hasn't caught on with non-technical users - the web-of-trust is necessary to do distributed identity and authentication properly (under the current model), and the importance of out-of-band verification can be hard to explain. Authentication (as opposed to authorization) is hard, even without factoring in state adversaries. The fact that the web-of-trust hasn't succeeded doesn't mean that another model won't, but I don't think it makes sense for PGP to throw out the one goal it already does incredibly well (securing communications) in order to focus on the biggest problem we haven't been able to solve in 20 years.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  WoT works well for some things like #bitcoin-otc IRC trading channel but still most users aren't checking sigs. I like how they wanted to completely remove identifying info and similar signature schemes from signify http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify
- zmanian 12y ago
  It isn't clear that we should want PGP to succeed from a communication point of view. It's clear that PGP has succeeded in protecting communications of a some subset of users for the last 20 years. Because of the lack of forward secrecy, it isn't clear that this would scale and how common key theft is. My opinion is basically GPG for identity and Axolotl for comms.

napoleond 12y ago

I'm not too sure. I am skeptical about the reality of replacing email any time soon, and more skeptical that a viable alternative for end-to-end encryption for email will present itself. If those two pessimistic assumptions hold true, then we're stuck with trying to make PGP easier to use. It's easier said than done, of course (I've tried and failed) but here's one way it could work: http://davidnoel.ca/specifying-a-pgp-client-that-your-grandmother-could-use/ http://davidnoel.ca/specifying-a-pgp-client-that-your-grandm...

vog 12y ago
There's an interesting project that tries to replace smartphone IM application with an open alternative which builds upon the email infrastructure: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/ http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/ That could be taken as a starting point for how to make things more smooth for users.

moxie 12y ago

A lot of the comments I've been getting are in the genre of "well... but GPG works." Yes, GPG is a powerful tool that makes some encrypted communication possible. But is it really "working" if it's the tool we've had for the past 20 years, and we still ended up in a world where surveillance is so ubiquitous and privacy is so rare? Having used GPG, it seems more likely to me that there are only ~50k GPG users in the world because of the product, not because of weak desire or need for private communication. I'm not suggesting that there's anything "better," but that it's really sad there isn't. GPG isn't ever going to be anything other than what it is now, and I don't think that's the future we want for ourselves. We could try to slap a GUI on top of it, but I don't believe great products are made that way. Good UX requires thinking about interactions all the way down to the protocol. The good news is that GPG has such a small legacy install base (literally on the order of ~50k users), that there's no reason to maintain compatibility with OpenPGP. When building new products, we can start fresh with modern cryptography, a modern protocol, and a modern design philosophy.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
You know you're one of only a few people in the world who is in a position to do that, right? Anyone else would (rightfully!) get torn to shreds on HN by tptacek or yourself. And I say "rightfully" because it is very likely that other people would screw up some central aspect to the security of any new product that claims security. It's not just that, though. Anyone else with your knowledge but no standing would be scorched for saying what you just said. "Throw away the one thing that has proven to be secure and write our own protocol" doesn't go hand in hand with "serious cryptographers trust what this person is saying." The truth is probably that either you do this or nobody will. You should. The world would be better for it.
- click170 12y ago
  Is there a kick starter page for this cause that I can contribute to? Because I would. I'm not going to back just any crypto project, but with the right people leading the charge I would get behind it.

tptacek 12y ago

I don't want GPG to get in the way of better, newer options. But even less do I want to read more about people burned by the incompetent engineering of lesser new alternatives. Can we just declare a flag day and switch to TextSecure?

Ao7bei3s 12y ago
Yes, but not unless: 1. there are full-featured native clients for computers that aren't smartphones 2. it works with anonymous accounts, without needing a phone number 3. federation is open Right now, TextSecure can't even fully replace OTR (for secure IMs), let alone GPG (for email <- real work).
- whyever 12y ago
  To replace email, we might want named conversations as well.
yuhong 12y ago
Yea, remember that even in 2020 you would still be much better off using well designed 1990s crypto than things like Telegram or Cryptocat. And TextSecure is not a true replacement.
edwintorok 12y ago
How about Chatsecure with Jabber and OTP? Isn't that a viable alternative too? Doesn't require you to use a phone number, so it works nicely on tablets or desktops (pidgin+otr), etc.

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A_COMPUTER 12y ago

>When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. >the email was written by someone who would voluntarily use GPG. >There just seems to be something particular about people who try GPG and conclude that it’s a realistic path to introducing private communication in their lives for casual correspondence with strangers. Is it just me or is the implication here that anybody who uses PGP is usually a kook of some kind?

danudey 12y ago
I think the implication is that GPG is so pathologically complex, awkward, cumbersome, and broken that getting GPG-encrypted e-mail means it's from someone who's so paranoid/obsessive that they encrypt all e-mail, even to strangers (when possible?) even when the tool is so awful as to discourage the average individual.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  >someone who's so paranoid/obsessive that they encrypt all e-mail, even to strangers That's pretty much what I meant, clearly somebody didn't like me bringing it up. I wonder why. I have to use PGP every day for my job, I don't feel like a paranoid/obsessive, so I resent the implication a little bit. It's a clunky piece of software, but it hasn't caused me nearly as much suffering as Lotus Notes.
  - fensipens 12y ago
    Don't bother. While I have much sympathy for the average user and see several problems with PGP, the gen-pop here is creating way too much buzz around a tool that is working reasonably well. And with respect to the PGP-user / character link.. this is just beyond stupidity.
- deleted 12y ago
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fensipens 12y ago

These rants are not very useful until one of the two geniuses (Green, Moxie) can come up with a comfortable solution to the core problem of key distribution. And given that nowadays Green seems completely consumed by twitter while Moxie believes in fixing whatsapp, I wouldn't hold my breath.

mbubb 12y ago
Could you further ID "Green"? Do not know who that is. Edit. Matthew Green?
- fensipens 12y ago
  Matthew D. Green, the "expert in applied cryptography and network security" who was invited to take a look at the Snowden-stash but declined because he was scared. Which is funny, because since Snowden he became some sort of web-celebrity always ready to tweet and comment on every little crypto/security issue.

acqq 12y ago

Note that the article author is the author of TextSecure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure It's not surprising that he prefers TextSecure over GPG in the context he explains: "introducing private communication(...) for casual correspondence with strangers." It's obvious that author prefers his chat for that. Still there are scenarios where the GPG wins over chat. But it's also true, most people would make serious errors if they'd try to use GPG.

eyeareque 12y ago
I don't think he is trying to push the use of text secure over PGP, he has admitted that there isn't a replacement for PGP yet. He is just a forward thinker, hoping for a future where strong encryption is ubiquitous.. and not the state where PGP is today.

eliteraspberrie 12y ago

There are a couple alternatives to GPG being developed right now. One is reop (https://github.com/tedu/reop https://github.com/tedu/reop). The cryptography is done by libsodium and it is well-written. Another is NetPGP (http://www.netpgp.com/ http://www.netpgp.com/). The cryptography is done by the OpenPGP SDK. The NetPGP code is well-written but the OpenPGP SDK code looks like OpenSSL. Both are promising and deserve everyone's support.

stormbrew 12y ago
Reop looks exciting, perhaps as being exactly what a "fresh start" should look like. I see the section on not supporting key revocation at all and it worries me, because it seems to me there should be some way to do so. But perhaps the key here is that this particular tool is not trying to solve the key distribution problem, which is a whole other kettle of fish? It is possible that PGP fails partly because it tries to do both. But that does mean that a solution still needs to be found for that problem, even if you switch to reop.
fab13n 12y ago
> OpenPGP SDK code looks like OpenSSL. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that intelligence services sabotage open source crypto projects by helping turning their codebase into an arcane mess, which scares away the million eyeballs which are supposed to make bugs shallow. I've worked on OpenSSL quite a long time ago; I thought they kept it so messy in order to sell their expertise through consulting. At that time, only tinfoil hat folks would have believed that spooks would spend millions sabotaging everything and anything crypto-related... Now I believe that infiltrating open-source SSL / TLS / PGP developper communities is at least as strong a priority as infiltrating terrorist communities for them, so I'm utterly convinced they're trying, and I'd rather bet they succeed.

mbubb 12y ago

Articles (and the attendant discussions) like this are incredibly useful for me. I really appreciate HN for things like this. Recently signed up for keybase to check it out. Read critiques (mostly negative) but jumped in anyway as I am hungry for something like it. I do not have a deep grasp of the arguments but I see the 'lipstick on a pig' criticism of slapping a gui on an aging infrastructure. The practical problem with keybase for me is finding people to test it out with. I've added folks who don't know me and my friends couldn't care less. There is a blindspot for me - I use ssh and rsa on a daily basis, many times a day. I do not know what I would do if I has to switch to something else. I do not know how to evaluate security options and know to know one is better than another. We have very good infosec people in my company and have a standing weekly meeting to vet my sysops doings. In any event will check out Whisper Systems and keep refreshing this discussion...

L_Rahman 12y ago
Just signed up for keybase and in the same position. Don't know anyone on the service to actually use it with. Interested in testing it out with me?
- eastbayjake 12y ago
  If no one's taken you up on that, here's a message for you: -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: Keybase OpenPGP v2.0.7 Comment: https://keybase.io/crypto https://keybase.io/crypto wcFMA5S7hsT55Ka3AQ/+K3YTd9aLF70PcDuDzUSBwt42I4UJdASvSzU9ljJZhxmh xn/XgzfuPVEqi75jhI20SfKJetR867leishDNU/XrynFCyJcr0ax6Q6BQes/w94d ErmBchxcYwFumB0i0tWMygmCUKgpL7W5bC26gB4AUdoPhhdJQnHYwiLvEv+e1G6I wFEA2/WzJlB+K+4v782zF7RhZaTA6OXl0noL6Nsoi2V/yufD5qKVnolx3RSHzdTd 1bSdS7lTCIQzvDmuLYvkophBL6Vb6Qa8IdwkLVxt+akr/W4oOxLaEE14HxS05OTO bN0R5yXzNNI7RWfU4cB3JKUMSKLGB4cBf+jEj1WyGCm04/9I1XgnNqFULE4RfHwG t8mqS1oeetfKlrzEx7NkXVn7mvITiYUzeH+M/DaTlnp5+Nb1FgQK1U54emIgEpmR qaG9JYDxZBtmBQ2gb3RtXndZFWQh7YifqaDFsUkJl4cdjXZ69WccvFRr+Vr3Ow1O m19lrHAFj4XZtsS9C1PNBejpdcfANoWjG+9Eitd6iliAo4nCG9jUi/6mIWRuamcs OS2uAAWMe1ZrfhwwU/x2+/QM6eGKU43DBLy9lmyFj2UgZKW1UokQg7iAp3Wd0f+Z SBEXNFsM3rPoYVb29boUcJtkA4CpArH36kIBv45A9u1c14uTUVRreGeLe1pqrsXB wEwD5S1urhQzgBEBCACk1jR8gIaMRKCsl7ofIjGr8PrrOYVCkNtpWjGsNnq+SFkG SUUekwzB0MfRVSdrkfVk/7Axrm0YGWqW9v12aNrrRLe8Vs/VJU9r2RRBgI164YbI UDxlGBJZhNnG1BxPVt1en1nH9ceEw4yq15giSxRMOhtlmpdv6Y0HIWzhnAb+Hc68 rxFq74j2wEfkHkIYJV7cOZtXy9WF0WHVgi0wIyiDHvV84KTO5HUv2qA1uJiqt3UU phq+lmFr3DzH7mcz2vLBW8r1AeFOd9VtRNVPkLEaVIjlCPGTYgr0hCfUX+JSf6PN 1VSRdogjcBu5Cqui60Fz9RKQvPCpX0NAUJpEZ30H0sEQATqCbZ/PF7nEqVHAOoH4 FK+Q6cR4+8iArPnUjr0lP0KWaQDJBghbYqQ8aUX37NUJaih7wae1b5WyBBCtwilI GowCJXwiD0kd7xUns61MhNDSn2K2ZPifHptJcv5QvODLkoJSHP4ylqCa9SrzyFNR gpRk3I31NIxZd7M5PT8fepQ75qTOgZ/v8ZTEd0HbPpjjRNJ3hMtIo7nmzPk54aD7 182jBWbXhiYiTTYEExnGwq+uDHoQjtGGBQzJegqeNex/q3Ba7Lf5RCbfFXQy3aDj JGRY6rZCQFbtcym2fjxeT9lRmHHeXA400zeLXgbqmmAKAcQwBtQQIF4Cg/cDNItN 6o5Jov0+pAm/NKKRWIXGJErGXsi0iTqJyl0anasbrQH6dnEXNbbMslIOtDl9CtKR N5Y+x+vJJKsOQaT6dJmQHZ19RxW4tickEr6zEu6IhB8ooMGMAjdq+tpRAF4+qKyK /yWUTIpp14deORe3aK7Hu0mA6H9dxDfwNwvat3Iv8R7YbsILdp7sFBPBlVLRLoBp BlYe7Eqroe7dCLg+v9Uw3Hpbu0yp3/BY64H3Qj9f7X3HQ+6nHQ0oQNS6XcwvJnKo JTV8lO263q0P7+Pti05SSs4= =gLgR -----END PGP MESSAGE-----

lisper 12y ago

I'm working on a GPG replacement that is designed to be super-easy to use. Not quite ready for prime time but if any HNers would like a sneak preview drop me a line. Contact info is in my profile.

yummyfajitas 12y ago

Reading this article over an unencrypted connection and viewing the resulting MITM attack is quite ironic: https://i.imgur.com/hXNGb5l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hXNGb5l.jpg GPG may be a failure, but HTTPS is not.

sixdimensional 12y ago

From what I have learned, security/cryptography is about protecting what needs to be protected for as long as is necessary (which is relative to the parties and data involved) - there is no such thing as "absolute" or "perfect" security/cryptography and probably never will be. Based on that statement, "good enough" is "good enough" relative to the value of what is being protected. From my personal experience, while difficult for use by ordinary users, GPG has proven "good enough" (if not better) for most common business/organizational/personal uses. That is not to say, that a better alternative/increased ease of use is not possible. Better alternatives are always possible (possibly hard), but it seems such an alternative has not yet presented itself. This leads me to believe that this is in fact an ongoing market and worldwide opportunity for those who have the skills to make alternatives real.

jms703 12y ago

breaking news! </sarcasm> ok. what's moxie selling next?

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aftbit 12y ago

I'm sick of "opinionated software". IMO it's code for "adding more settings is hard". I'd prefer "sane defaults" as an operating mode, and maybe burying confusing settings behind a warning screen like about:config in Firefox. Software that thinks it knows my use case better than I do is wrong.

whyever 12y ago
In crypto options are dangerous, so it makes a lot of sense to be opinionated.

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mmaunder 12y ago

GPG has been struggling with funding for some time now, but that's fixed: https://gigaom.com/2015/02/06/funds-flow-in-for-gnupg-author-after-article-reveals-his-plight/ https://gigaom.com/2015/02/06/funds-flow-in-for-gnupg-author... Also, to be fair, it's used widely by many infosec researchers/vendors/IC folks who know how it's done.

lucb1e 12y ago

> When I receive a GPG encrypted email from a stranger, though, I immediately get the feeling that I don’t want to read it. I don't understand why. Did I glance over it, or is it not in the article? When I receive GPG encrypted email, I only have to enter my password and it gets decrypted. Simple as that. Same as when starting me email client, then too I have to enter a password to decrypt the login for the server. It takes only a moment really. I don't receive that much email from strangers anyway, but the times I get GPG encrypted email from a stranger it's never spam, so it's surely worth the approximately three seconds to enter that password. (For the curious, I use Thunderbird with Enigmail and kgpg as front-end to GnuPG.)

jshholland 12y ago
It's probably equivalent to receiving a letter written in green ink (British perception that letters written to media in green ink are more likely to be from what I'll charitably call fringe interestts)

JoelJacobson 12y ago

I think it's mainly GnuPG's fault. There is no API, so developers can't integrate it into their applications. The only way is to pass arguments to gpg binary and interpret the output on STDOUT using regexes. The "libraries" that exist for Python and other languages all work like this. That is why they require you to specify the "The path to the gpg executable." If GnuPG provided a real API, then there would be hope, because the actual OpenPGP specification isn't that bad if you only implement and use the bare-minimum features. This is one of the reasons my company developed support to deal with PGP signatures directly in PostgreSQL, without using GnuPG: https://github.com/trustly/bankapi/tree/master/debian/postgresql-pgcrypto-openpgp https://github.com/trustly/bankapi/tree/master/debian/postgr... It's a bit funny it's now actually safer/better/easier to use PostgreSQL instead of GnuPG if you are developing an application which uses PGP, as your only option is to pass input to the gpg executable and regex it's output, which is hackish and not suitable for production purposes.

tiatia 12y ago

Yes. This guy does not need GPG. But he needs a new haircut.

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antihero 12y ago

I as a fairly technical person fine GPG confusing, despite being shown how to use it several times, and still have no idea whether it's working properly or if anything is actually being secured with how I've got it set up. Also, seems centric on the dwindling population of people who actually use email clients.

bonn1 12y ago

Clever Marketing gig for TextSecure which has been rumbled by the third commentator on that page: > Okay, since you want to play in the same league as OpenPGP: where can I find the RFC describing TextSecure? How many independent implementations of the TextSecure protocol currently exist?

whyever 12y ago
There is Whatsapp, which is not compatible but uses the Axolotl protocol as well. You can find the protocol on github.

ianso 12y ago

Sorry but what is the actual point of this blog post? GPG is just one guy. Who's practically beggared himself writing and maintaining the tool. GPG is actually used by human rights activists, journalists etc. That, right there, is reason enough to celebrate it and NOT "kill it off". I think the massive pile-on this is creating is really dumb, to be honest. So Moxie thinks it could be done better; that's great. He's good enough that he can "show, not tell". Why waste time denigrating a project that's basically a labour of love for one guy that is actually tremendously important, even if it's "90's technology"? Old doesn't necessarily mean bad.

DanBC 12y ago
We need very good quality encryption software that is not really hard to use. PGP is impossible for many people to use correctly. That means there is a bunch of -- often insecure -- software to fill the gap. So the people who really need PGP/GPG have to struggle to use it and don't know if they've managed it or they use some other software instead that probably doesn't protect them.
fab13n 12y ago
It's not about GPG sucking; it's about the absence of anything sucking less than GPG. It's not about activists and journalists being (more or less) able to use GPG; it's about the fact that nobody who doesn't face as deadly a risk as them would bother to use GPG. I didn't feel any denigration reading him; rather, the statement that: * We have new crypto needs, in wake of revelations such as Snowden's; * GPG isn't an adequate answer to those needs, and isn't likely to evolve into one; * Tech people don't realize that GPG is unlikely to morph into an adequate solution, and therefore don't bother starting an alternative. Finally, I believe that a successful answer would rely on excellent UX and PR at least as much as sound crypto. I'm not aware that Moxie is an expert in these fields (although he might have more talents than I know), so it's not obvious that he's in a position of showing rather than telling.
mike_hearn 12y ago
> Why waste time denigrating a project that's basically a labour of love for one guy that is actually tremendously important, even if it's "90's technology"? Old doesn't necessarily mean bad. In the world of crypto, where we've learned so much, yes old means bad. Almost always. Why denigrate GPG? Unfortunately, because the message that it's not good isn't being widely heard. How many NEW crypto projects are being created that start out by saying, "first we will use GPG"? I've seen lots. OK, you failed right there, right at the start. Don't do that. How many crypto geeks STILL spout rubbish about how the PKI is totally busted and the web of trust is the future? Way too many. WoT is sort of like the year of desktop Linux by now. It's just a bad joke that too many people won't let go of. The most serious and effective applied cryptographers I know about are all ignoring GPG and rolling new modern crypto protocols. I feel the same way as Moxie - if you build a product based on GPG then almost immediately you are less interesting than a project that's doing something new. And FWIW I have the same sinking feeling when I get a GPG encrypted email. Sometimes I don't read it immediately, I put it off. Sometimes I have to put it off because I'm not near my laptop. And when I decrypt it, inevitably I discover that I could have guessed the contents of the mail from the subject line and identity of the sender. The encryption was largely pointless to begin with. The future of encrypted messaging is not GPG. We need to collectively let it go.

motters 12y ago

I don't think that email is going to go away any time soon, so there doesn't appear to be a lot of alternative. I doubt that Moxie is suggesting that users send emails in plain text, so maybe email encryption needs to be reinvented.

zby 12y ago

For 20 years nobody cared about crypto - how is it surprising that we have what we have? For the future - progress does not come from just line of development, there needs to be many many experiments before we get good crypto. We need better UIs, and we also need many infrastructure improvements. I have not looked at the protocol itself - but it being flexible and having too many options is not really a problem - it is needed for the other layers built upon it to have space for experimentation. But the PGP related libs are really not good. I had once an idea for a Web of Trust related website - and I found out that there is no way to for example verify a signature without loading a full key-ring, that is loading all unrelated keys into the memory just to build the data structure used by the library. This is just one case - but it supports the thesis that the libs are a fossil from the last century. If we want better end user tools we need to give better libs for programmers to start the experiments.

escapologybb 12y ago

I'm not a programmer so I was hoping somebody could answer this question for me, why did Moxie choose to italicise the word python in this sentence: "Mailpile had to write 1400 lines of python code just to interface with a native GnuPG installation for basic operations, and it still isn’t rock solid."

Johnny_Brahms 12y ago
He means that you can do alot in 1400 lines of python, and if interfacing with GPG needs that much to be "not rock solid" there is something wrong.

Tharkun 12y ago

Creating a GPG alternative is hard. That's pretty much the only reason why it's still around. That, and the ubiquity of e-mail. Sending encrypted/signed e-mail with GPG isn't hard when you're using things like Enigmail. Maybe the GUI could be a little friendlier, I don't know, but the encryption part isn't hard. Key management, now that's hard. Not just in terms of usage, but in terms of explaining it to new users. On the one hand, both parties need to somehow exchange keys before they can communicate in a secure fashion. Doing this is hard, and if done wrong can leave you vulnerable to attack. That's why we verify key fingerprints. If there's an easy way to make this painless, I don't know it. Central authorities like what we've got with TLS/HTTPS are obviously a steaming pile of shite. Decentralized (like GPG) are difficult for users. What else is there? I don't know.

upofadown 12y ago

I think a major part of the solution is going to involve teaching people about public key cryptography in school. It isn't the sort of thing that anyone wants to bother to learn on their own. Without this essential understanding any attempt to get the general public to protect their privacy is doomed. Even if they somehow manage to go through the motions they are eventually going to do something to mess everything up if they don't know what they are doing. Some tasks require understanding. This is one of those tasks.

wuschel 12y ago

Well, that is certaily an understandable position. I am very happy that such a software exists in the open source community, as unpractical it might be. The trouble, however, does not start with the lack of UI design, or other impracticalities - for me it starts with the platform I choose to run a PGP type of software on. Would you trust your Iphone, Android, Microsoft/Linux/iOS/Lenovo/Dell/et cetera computer with "really sensitive, mission critical" data? I don't. "The paranoid will survive" is a good sentence to remember. So I better install that PGP-etc on a offline unit and decrypt encrypt my messages there.

radisb 12y ago

When I imagine a world with an easy to use encrypted email system such that anyone could transparently use, I cant avoid imagining either a world sunken in spam, or a world where each individual no matter their computer skills" would have to maintain anti-spam systems. So we are back to square one regarding mass adoption...

tanx 12y ago

I'm completely missing a discussion about federation. Sure TextSecure and iMessage solve UX in a great way. But what about business requirements that email/PGP does solve? More in our blog post here: https://blog.whiteout.io/2015/02/25/pgp-theres-life-in-the-old-dog-yet/ https://blog.whiteout.io/2015/02/25/pgp-theres-life-in-the-o...

bkeroack 12y ago

One of the problems is the constant mantra: "crypto is hard--leave it to the experts", discouraging new tools from being written. Crypto is hard but there's a big community out there to help with auditing the codebase and fixing issues once a project gains traction.

mark-r 12y ago

> “I send you the private key to communicate privately, right?” That could be fixed with a simple terminology change, call it the "secret" key rather than the "private" key.

contingencies 12y ago

Developer of phone-based crypto afterthoughts that give people a false sense of security and ignore the evidence that using phones is the worst thing you can do for privacy and security: "[my competitor] the most widely deployed message-oriented cryptography application in the open source world is crap". Well, yes and no. Forward secrecy is nice, but a world without forward secrecy and a workable standard when required is still arguably better than a world full of people throwing away insecure phones every six months while convincing themselves App1.2.3 makes them untouchably secure because n-marketing claims.