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PGP 8.0 Beta Released
James Evans writes "With a release date seemingly scheduled in December, the new PGP Corporation has today released PGP 8.0 Beta. It features Smart Card functionality, Unicode support, Novell Groupwise support, among other things. A Mac OS X Beta is out as well, also with a robust feature set. One word of caution however: On Friday, December 6th, 2002, the beta will expire, at which time access to encrypted data will be prevented."
... they will ever develop "Really Good Privacy", PGP is just too M$'esque for my liking ;)
I thought this was your public key!
PGP has two P's, GPG only has one. According to the Gartner Group, 83% of CIO's surveyed said that having 2 P's was vital to their business and something they would implement in the next 18 months. Seriously, though, PGP has a user interface that mere mortals can use. GPG doesn't (or at least didn't last time I tried it).
Hello,
Recently I noticed that my teenage son Ezekiel had begun to encrypt his emails with a program called PGP. I was concerned because I'd always covertly monitored their email for any hints of illegal activity, drug use or interest in the occult - some of his classmates have begun playing Dungeons and Dragons and listening to KISS. Since Ezekiel was now using PGP, his activites were hidden from me!
Additionally, I also overheard him talking of using a program called Stegasaurus to embed secret information into normal-looking pictures.
Terrified that my son might be speaking in some sort of sinful code, I immediately grounded him for a month. He was only allowed to go to school and Bible study.
Anyways, I've done several days worth of research on this and discovered a few things about PGP that I'd like to share with the readers of these web sites. To begin with, I realized that many of the claims made by the creators of PGP are blatently false. Although I do not have a background in mathematics (I have an AA in Photography) I was easily able to rebuild Ezekiel's private key via his public key and one of his encrypted messages.
Of course I am above-average in intelligence, but PGP is supposedly unbreakable! Perhaps crytogrophers aren't as smart as they believe?
Fortunately in this case Ezekiel was just discussing a girl he met in school - a situation I harshly reprimanded him for. However, while PGP may be a program with flaws, it got me thinking about other programs.
Perhaps someone will construct a PGP-like program that cannot be so easily broken; one that would take days of computer time to hack!
My concern with a program like this is that people who use cryptography always do so because they have something to hide. A sense of guilt and shame seems to drive them. They know that they are doing something wrong and desperately want to hide it from the eyes of the world (although hiding it from the eyes of God is another matter! LOL!)
A study recently released by the Institute for Family Computing revealed that the top three uses of cryptography were for 1) "terrorist-related activity" 2) pedophillia and 3) drug abuse. In fact as far as I can tell, no legitimate use was on the top ten at all!
What scares me about this is that law-enforcement agencies will be unable to sift through email to find people who are breaking the law, or otherwise engaged in suspicious activity. At a time when our nation is under siege, I find it disturbing that people are working on developing cryptography that cannot be broken, even by our protectors in the FBI and CIA! Only those with something to hide truly need cryptography.
Thus I urge cryptogrophers world wide to refrain from working on such programs, until our nation is no longer at war. I would ask those of other countries to respect our right to self-defense and aid us in our time of trouble. Your cryptographic skills can be better put to use trying to find terrorists than to assist them.
Thank you for your time.