Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Is There a Future for PGP?

Posted by Cliff on from the deciphering-the-marketingspeak dept.

Thom Dyson asks: "So it looks like McAfee is walking away from PGP. At least that's how I interpret their marketing speak. I've been told PGP doesn't work on XP, does that hold true for the Open Source version as well?"

3 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Does anyone even use pgp or gpg? by zcat_NZ · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This should probably be a slashdot poll. Everyone agrees that encryption is a good idea and we should all be using it, but do you actually know anyone who does? Have YOU generated a key, had it signed by some trusted friends, and submitted it to a keyserver or put it on your web page? When you send mail, do you first check if the recipient has a public key and encrypt it if they do?

    I know I don't.. :)

    --
    455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
  2. I use PGP every day by Dr.+Bent · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm working on a software project with a few friends, and whenever we talk about highly sensitive stuff, or send source code, we always PGP encrypt our messages.

    Also, if i'm at work and I want to send sensitive material home to work on, I'll usually encrypt it to my own key before I send it.

    The fact of the matter is, though, most people don't think what they have to say is worth protecting with encrpytion...and most of the time, they're right.

    What we need is completely transparent use of PGP in an e-mail client. The user should never know it's there at all.

  3. Answers by rjh · · Score: 5, Insightful
    • PGP on Windows XP. PGPtray works, PGP for Outlook XP is dodgy, PGPdisk is broken and PGPnet will hork your system. At least, those are the reports on alt.security.pgp.
    • NAI is walking away from PGP. This is a Good Thing, believe it or not. Or, at the very least, not a Bad Thing. PGP has always existed in two different components with totally different agendas:
      1. The community's agenda is to enhance individual liberties and ensure electronic privacy.
      2. The corporation's agenda is to turn a profit.

      ... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that those two agendas are not exactly in sync with each other.

      1. The community is alive and well. There are a lot of individuals who are interested (and some who are genuinely obsessed!) with the notion of personal privacy and personal liberties. The GNU Privacy Guard crowd is part of this community--so what if their initials are GPG instead of PGP? So are the remailers, mixmasters and everyone else.
      2. NAI is dying. Due to the fact that I'm a former NAI employee, I'm not going to say more than that--except to recognize that Network Associates has a long history of buying great software companies and failing to capitalize on them. (Check out the San Jose Mercury-News from February 2001 for some brilliant examples.)
    • Summary: the community is alive and kicking. GPG keeps getting better and better--at 500k, it's slim enough to fit on a floppy, it supports RFC2440 and RFC2440bis, and has good integration with almost all UNIX mailers. The WinPT and GPGshell programs give friendly Win32 front-ends (but both still need a lot of work).
    ... Don't panic. Unlike the Monty Python parrot sketch, PGP really is just resting. ;)