Slashdot Mirror
Can GnuPG Deliver?
jso888 writes "After Network Associates decided to halt further development of PGP, I'm sure that many users like myself who use non-CLI platforms most of the time, wondered "what next?" (PGP Freeware is not an option, since it's tied into the Network Associates product). Salon today has a nice article on GnuPG, the Open PGP/GNU alternative. The article highlights one of the problems with Open Source software today: its "by the geek, for the geek" nature, which by and large places barriers to mass adoption of OSS, especially important capabilities like personal encryption. One of the nice things about NAI PGP was its ease of use and commercial polish. It was easy to install and use, and integrated nicely with Windows software like Eudora and ICQ. GnuPG, admittedly, isn't quite there yet, the article concludes. That's too bad; given the privacy-hostile world we live in, the last thing we need is another barrier to widespread cryptography adoption."
The point isn't whether you have secrets now, it's whether you'll ever have secrets. If you only send one encrypted email, and "someone" is watching, they know to devote all of their effort to breaking that one message. It's not a matter of "having secrets to protect", it's a matter of ideologically being a thorn in the side of people who want to be able to read your email.
The other point is that it's better to use encryption because you can. It's like always using ssh, instead of "just when you don't want someone to snoop your connection". Use encryption all the time, because protecting your privacy is always a good thing.
-il cylic
Defend Freedom
I use gnupg. Not a lot, but with a few people who have it set up right I can just exchange PGP messages without really doing anything, which is the way it must be.
I have tried many, many products to do PGP, and they all have problems. Even GPG with my favorite mailer had some fairly big setup hurdles. Fortunately once I cleared them it was relatively easy. I can only imagine that grandma is never going to use it at the current state of integration.
PGP functionality needs to work perfectly with mailers. You enter a pass phrase, and it just works. Until that happens the masses are not going to use PGP. This is imporant. If it were that easy, 90% of e-mail could be PGP encrypted, by default no questions asked. You can get there now, but only if you know a lot about PGP, and communicate with people in the same boat.
The UNIX mentality, as far as I can tell, has quite a bit to do with building modular, scriptible components. GPG is no exception-- it comes with TONS of switches, only a few of which are likely to be used on a regular bases.
While some people characterize this as "by geeks for geeks" I don't think that is really the case. Having an extensible, scriptible component makes it REALLY EASY to build whatever frontend you want with whatever capabilities you want, and it also means that one can have the same capabilities available from a script.
Now, I agree that GPG is not yet ready for widespread adoption, but it is not the open source or UNIX mentalities that are broken. The tool just needs some time to mature.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I sign nearly all of my outgoing emails, but seriously, encryption will remain a geek toy until AOL or another big player decides to provide public key infrastructure (PKI, keys signed by eidey trusted authorities, or sufficiently many people that are minimally seperated from you) for its users. There are plenty of GUI encryption email clients out there. I believe there's a GPG plugin for Eudora. However, finding your friend's public key is hte big problem right now. Once everyone's ISPs ste[ in and sign the user's keys and proide key servers, then signed and encrypted email will be the norm. After a short bit, you will be able to filter out SPAM by doing good checks on signatures, or prosecuting those spammers that actually sign their emails with valid and registered keys. Encryption will also greatly increase CPU demands for mass emailing. This is why ISPs will like crypto: it deters spam and reduces thier bandwidth requirements. The big question is: how long will it take for a major ISP to start providing PKI.
Key generation isn't hard. Once AOL starts signing all of their users' public keys, then it will be common practice for you email client to go the all of the recipients' ISPs, verify their Verisign certificate, and verify theirsignature on the user's public key, then encrypt everything at transmit time.
Key generation isn't all that tough. Nearly everyone trusts Verisign.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
The front end doesn't solve the problem that *corporate* users face.
GnuPG doesn't support ADKs (additional decryption keys). A lot of people don't LIKE the whole idea of ADKs. But look at it calmly. I would NOT have an ADK in my personal PGP key under any circumstances. But the PGP key I use for work - that has a designated revoker (so if I'm sacked the key can be revoked without my cooperation), and an ADK that *requests* (it cannot enforce) that items encrypted to my work PGP key can be read by one of our Corporate PGP keys (whose use is very highly controlled - and is held split anyway).
I have encrypted disk partitions - but if I'm hit by a bus, the Corporate disk ADK can recover the data that belongs to the business.
GPG doesn't inherently support key splitting, or disk partition encryption. The key splitting allows proper auditable control over particularly powerful keys. For example, our Root Corporate Signing Key is split amongst 8 trustworthy people and at least 4 of those 8 must cooperate to bring that key together for use.
GPG is great, but it won't replace PGP in the Corporate setting (where it is used a lot more than you might expect...) even WITH a nice frontend until it can support such features. I look forwards to the time when it does!
A business cannot risk losing access to data which is encrypted, so these facilities are required.