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Ciphire, A Transparent, Easy PGP Alternative
mixter writes "Hi. I'd like to point your attention to Ciphire, a fully free and soon-to-be-audited-OpenSource 'Global PKI' project I've been working on for the last three years. As the first three or four thousand geeks started using Ciphire and seem happy, with some tech articles written, I guess the /. community might find this interesting, too. Ciphire hopes to have solved the problems that prevented PGP from a broader deployment, with even higher security standards - as already confirmed by crypto experts Housley & Ferguson. More useful information, e.g. in Wired or in the Nerd^H^H^H^Hexperts FAQ."
What's wrong with the GNU Privacy Guard?
Good work man! I hope this all pulls through!
Or?
Ciphire hopes to have solved the problems that prevented PGP from a broader deployment
so how exactly are you getting it installed and turned on by default in Outlook and Outlook Express?
tell me I'm wrong if you want, but that's the only way you'll get Jane and Joe 6pack to use it.
I mean I know folks here on /. will find this cool and may acutally use it for mail. But, when a portion of net users have a hard time remembering thier email username and password, will this really take off? I mean PGP took off to a certain extent, but if you mention it to the average net user they look puzzled.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
The main problem this project will encounter will be gaining momentum. PGP already has a huge userbase and infrastructure. It's not that difficult to use for anyone technically minded, and you can already buy "idiot proof" versions to plug into Outlook (I believe). For anyone using Thunderbird, the enigmail plugin offers PGP for free, which works great.
Maybe I'm missing something?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
And what are the advantages? We already have the OpenPGP standard which is implemented by GnuPG and PGP. People who prefer free software are able to use GnuPG which is licensed under the GPL. If someone prefers commercial software he can use PGP - it even comes with a nice GUI if you use it on Windows. So let's look at your product: Non-free, No-source code, not standards complient, binaries only available for a limit number of platforms. So - in your posting you say "OpenSource" - on the webpage you write that you may publish the source in the future, but that it will only be free for non-commercial users. This is NOT OpenSource - see http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php for the definition what OpenSource means. Anyway, are there ANY advantages why I should even bother do download your product? Ah - don't mind - I just noticed that there aren't any LinuxPPC binaries, so I can't use it.
...and wish to subscribe to your newsletter! /Homer
Seriously - I don't like how my first encounter with your site is when it tries to set a passel of cookies. Get on that, would ya?
From https://www.ciphirebeta.com/about/facts.html :
Q: Are you going to publish your source code?
A: Yes. Once the code is stable and we've had independent code audits, we'll publish the source code.
Hmm, I wonder if this practice is popular among wanna-be open-source security projects. For a regular software project, I'd expect the normal cycle to be: open source it, gather feedback, improve it, and then repeat the cycle.
However, they seem to do it in another order. Is this due to the fact that it's a security product? I don't see why they would do things differently, because as far as I understand it's still an "under construction" project for "testing purposes" without any implied guarantees. More eyes on the source earlier means sooner quality product delivery.
I mean, get lost, telling us this is better than GPG won't make us run and start use this stuff. Easier to use for joesixpacks ? You mean taking GPG-key-control out of their hands and doing it in the background with some mail application ? No thanks. I know GPG, I trust GPG, I use it with many OSes and with many different applications, very easily, for both signing and encrypting. As many thousand of other people do. So you'd better think some really better arguments there, than in those linked articles.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Is it OpenPGP-compliant? If yes, what are the advantages it has over established solutions like GnuPG? And if not, why should we use it at all?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I'll inflict erm install this on management PCs and see how long it lasts.
Ease of use is the prime and only consideration.
Torc
-- NSY - SY OOT - Doric signs on local shop doors.
From their pages: "Ciphire Mail will always be free for private users, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and the press".
Yet not nerdy enough to use ^W?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Whole disk SECTOR encryption? Virtual Volumes that we can mount as an NTFS folder?
PGP Whole Disk and PGP Disk functionality is a MUST. Without it, your alternative is not an alternative at all. NEXT PLEASE.
I did not RTFA, but if not, I cannot tell my customers to use it no matter how easy to use it is - simply because I am not going to switch.
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
Gee, why I'm not enthralled with Ciphire protocols:
1) Another 'works perfectly program with WinXp, WinXX, etc.' that claims it will also support Linux/xBSD with no catches....where have I heard that one before?
2) Another Certificates laden protocol in the footsteps of SSL. (ie - you can have security if you pay us the megabucks for that 3 month term Certificate, but ignore those Certificates easily faked, etc.) I wish SSL would die instead of being a Certificate money making machine.
3) Another program that promises it will do everything SSH already does without the certificates....just buy a certificate to make Ciphire work.
This is just snake oil by clueless security wannabes... Telltale sign: they dismiss OpenPGP as not being able to support the great security features they support, without elaborating on them. And how could you trust email security system that exchanges messages with central server? Come on!
I think this product would of been great if they would of made it OpenPGP compliant, and have a method of signing your keys for a particular email address(verify email address, send a web link, click on link and you're done) If they would of implemented all the automatic sender email matching, automatic decryption, automatic signing, etc. with the current(OpenPGP) standards it would be great.. You would already have a compatible userbase & everything. But as of now I have to support two standards S/MIME and OpenPGP when communicating with people.. Why would I want to recommend to a less technical friend a 3rd one? I'll just set them up with Thunderbird/Mozilla and Enigmail(http://enigmail.mozdev.org) If you havent looked at enigmail check it out.. I'm very impressed with it, and it works fine under windos too.
Okay, "soon to be audited" and "I've been working on for the last three years" in the same sentence don't really inspire confidence.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
This doesn't solve any problems that exist in PGP, and it ties you into this company and their database of certs. I'll stick to something free, and not involving you having all the power.
First off, encryption is done in two layers. With a 2048bit RSA and ElGamal key [both of which can be solved with GNFS ... in a shitload of time]. They ... WTF???
encrypt the data with AES in CBC-HMAC mode (??? HMAC is not an encryption algo) then Twofish in CCM mode.
First off, you MAC the ciphertext since it's gonna be exposed anyways. Second... CCM mode? WTF? CTR mode is simpler.
It's like they went out of their way to overly complicate the process.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I'm planning for a while now to make a website about slashdot's articles. To list stories that gets marked as lie/misinformation/slashvertising/dupe/tripe in the first few posts on a page with possible user action to mark them, etc. I might even code a dupecheck.pl. Any ideas/suggestions/solutions are welcome or an url which points me to an already existing site like this. I'm fedup with the poor editorial work and i want to back up my reasoning with statistics. You could even see on the long run who posts the most dupes, or even implement a game to guess who's the next dupe poster :) This is all fantasy yet, if i get positive feedback im going to definately do this.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
it's another way to get signed/encrypted email into the hands of more people - whether they're geeks, or not. If it gets a few more people using some kind of authentication for email, then it's another strike against spammers/VXers; surely, it can't be all that bad, then, can it?
Sure, it isn't GPG, PGP, or any of the more "traditional" encryption programs. But then, how many Joe/Jane Sixpacks do you know that use those, either? From reading the article, it seems to greatly simplify the process of installing and using email signing/encryption, and that's something that I've run into trying to get people to use GPG/PGP: "It's too complicated; I have to remember too much stuff".
It looks like the security of it is being vetted, even if the source isn't as open as some would like (yet). Fine, it isn't "perfect" from a geek point of view, and it still has a way to go before it'll work on more email clients - but it's a start at de-geeking email crypto, which is something that can only help.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Most people I know use Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, or some other webmail program as their main email client. on a server and accessed through an insecure connection. You can always cut-n-paste GPG/PGP encrypted text into the message form and send that, but it's a hassle.
Ciphire is another feasible solution for people who use desktop email clients. But it doesn't change the big picture. The problem with widespread acceptance of encryption? Most web users don't use email clients. Right now I'd guess that public-key encryption is only going to become standard would be if Google finds a way to implement it in Gmail.
What does Jane and Joe sixpack need with PGP encryption?
I mean yeah, I'd like to see other people take privacy more seriously--if nothing else, it helps protect those of us who already take it seriously (it's a needle in a haystack sort of thing)--but people would rather read their mail instantly than have to bother remembering yet another password.
Parent is a known canuck troll!
License it under an OSI license and release the source code or quit wasting my time. If I can't get it free with source without "non-commerical use only" crap then get lost.
Slashdot editors: You failed your job miserably.
Is the source available? If not, it's snake oil.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Fuggedaboutit. There's a central server with an account for each user. There's a new GUI mail client (!) There's no compatibility with existing formats like S-MIME or PGP/GPG. Thanks, but no thanks.
This looks quite interesting... It makes the whole "here's my public key, now you give me mine" process much more simplified and transparent, which is really the big problem with PGP. Although pgp keyservers make this a little simplified (especially the new PGP beta server, it looks slick https://keyserver-beta.pgp.com/), the end user still has to actively search out public keys for their contacts.
However, as with all things, corporate acceptance is probably going to be pivotal for this, especially as corporations are probably much more concerned about security than the average user. I haven't downloaded a build yet, but make it possible for corporations to set up their own internal key servers, and allow the software to specify which keyservers it should upload/negotiate with first. Although I'm sure setting up a keyserver is possible, I still don't know how I would be able to set one up for, say my school, if I wanted to. You might even be able to sell a license for the keyserver and keep the basic software free, though you would probably get bonus points if the whole thing was OSS.
Looks like it uses a Ca approach, so it is secure as long as you trust them. They go to great lengths to talk about their paranoia, but it doesn't all sound right (why talk about wooden blocks?).
They use RSA with a 2k key, and DSA with a 2k key. If they are that worried about DSA why not worry the same about RSA (1K DSA is probably stronger then 2k RSA). They use Elgamal, but don't talk about how they avoid the ciphers weaknesses (a problem the PGP community has struggled with for a long time).
Sounds like engineering towards executive summaries to me. They need to provide the protocol for public review before I spend any time using it.
(Disclaimer: I admit I just gave a quick look)
Don't compare this solution to GPG/PGP since the key distribution and trust models are different.
But how is this different from working with S/MIME and a (supposedly free) CA?
13-4=54/6
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
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Version: PGPfreeware for non-commercial use
qANQR1DBwk4D5F2YKoTmerkQC/0Tl5MChitPajOOAZQRLXq
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zEQLmRFppwb7ALFkFY6dkrbyKi0kMCEg3
1Tr0efYiD0hJ7OAwOcruelss6a7Qtsagc
Mzf1P8wluS+FkWXQZLCcv5grFLw9xskm+
JfG97nO97bo+cpyxsrg=
=hcA2
----
Every month, Bruce Schneier's CryptGram reviews security products, events, and technologies. There are tons of people out there who claim to have invented better, easier to use crypto.
But as it has been mentioned already, until the source code is available, there is no incentive for people to try a closed source application in order to review how solid it really is, especially when dealing with data encryption. At best, it will help the vendor improve their useability (which seems to be their target anyway).
And even when the source code does get released (under what license!), it'll still have to deal with S/MIME and OpenPGP standards...
Why is there so much negativity here?
:(
I understand that PGP, RSA et al are sufficient for current encryption, but this might prove to be different and advantageous. Slashdotters in general like diversity, right? IMO it shouldn't be any different for this.
Of course, there may be problems, but many new technologies have those. I see no reason to trash it like most of these posts seem to be doing
PS: This may sound like a plug, but i'm not affiliated in any way.
StrayByte.Net
FRIST POST!
... anyone?
naah, not really
2. LICENSE GRANT
(a) Subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement, Licensor grants to Licensee a non-exclusive, personal, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right, during the term of this Agreement, to use the Software, and the Services solely for Licensee's own Personal Use and in accordance with the applicable documentation and instructions made available by Licensor.
(b) In no event shall Licensee distribute, display, or otherwise make available to any third party, the Software (including any copy, portion, extract, or derivative thereof).
(c) Licensee shall not, and shall not assist, enable or otherwise permit or allow any third party to, (i) alter, adapt, modify, translate, create derivative works of, (ii) except to the extent expressly permitted by mandatory applicable law notwithstanding an agreement to the contrary, decompile, disassemble or otherwise reverse engineer or attempt to derive the source code of, or any technical data, know-how, trade secrets, processes, techniques, specifications, protocols, Key and data-formats, methods, algorithms, interfaces, ideas, solutions, structures or other information embedded or used in, (iii) rent, lend, loan, lease, sell, distribute or sublicense, or (iv) remove, alter or obscure any proprietary or restrictive notices affixed to or contained in, the Software or any copy, portion, extract or derivative thereof. In addition, Licensee shall not provide, disclose or otherwise make available the Software or any copy, portion, extract or derivative thereof, or permit use of any of the foregoing by or for the benefit of any third party (including, without limitation, on a hosting, service-bureau, time-sharing or subscription service basis).
(d) The Software is licensed as a single product package and Licensee shall not, and shall not assist, enable or otherwise permit or allow any third party to, separate the Software, or use any component parts thereof other than as part of the Software as and in the form provided by Licensor.
(e) Licensee shall not use the Software other than in connection with the Key-Data and the Services provided by Licensor under this Agreement.
https://www.ciphirebeta.com/about/eula.html
Two concerns that I have now:
1) This is beta. The license is for beta. It is to be for OpenSource(?) But, what if everybody installs and uses it only to find later that there is a fee? (No big deal, I say.)
2) Privacy. The license agreement clearly spells out that they can collect and use "personally identifiable information" as they wish. (NOT good.)
"Q: How are you financed?
A: By some very unusual business angels. For the time being they wish to sit in the background."
and "Our commitment is to publish the source before the end of 2005, hopefully sooner than later."
I'd like to know if the "business angels" are, in fact, certain agencies of the government. That would be clever. Let everybody use the so-called encryption that only they can break, and then, after they've caught all the "subversives", they never release the source code. Gotcha!
After the source is released, and after everybody has had a chance to see it, then I might think about using it.
This requires you to sign up to an account with them, and they maintain control of certs for everyone. You can only communicate securely with other people who also sign up with them. This is plenty of reason for hostility. There was no reason at all not to be openpgp compliant, and I think people would welcome an alternative implimentation of an open standard like that. But trying to convince people to use a centralized scheme where some company hsa full control is not a good plan.
I'm always suspicious when a technical review plays misleading word games. Here's an excerpt from their expert review pdf (page 18) :
"With encryption solutions using PGP or S/MIME, an unsigned email message allows an attacker to forge the originator s identity even if the message is encrypted. The recipient cannot easily detect the change in the originator. However, in the Ciphire system, encryption includes authentication information. The session key used to encrypt the email message is digitally signed by the sender for every layer of encryption."
Although a technically accurate statement, it is highly misleading by comparing signed verses unsigned functions and implying a deficiency in GPG where none exists. GPG/PGP supports the same signing ability.
There's nothing like free advertising for an unFree product on /. 3 cheers to /. editors.
If a project tries to hide its license (not in front page, nor in FAQ,) there's a good chance it's a non Free EULA. It's funny you call it Open Source when no source are available, and your "2. LICENSE GRANT" should be changed to "2. LICENSE RESTRICTION".
Freedomware license example, and it's easy to read and understand:
Copyright (C) 2005 Freedomware. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the project nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE PROJECT AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE PROJECT OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Open Source example - difficult to read and requires knowledge of law to understand:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Did anyone read the part about the Ciphire fingerprints? That is somehow supposed to make their CA/PKI uncompromisable. Or am I seeing something wrong? It's in that review and they also say that they have invented the first PKI that they themselves cannot efficiently compromise. So what is that darn Ciphire Fingerprint system? Anybody care to explain?
Is it just me, or does anyone else have 140 dB klaxons going off in their head when they read "soon to be audited" and "working on this for years" with regards to a cryptography project? Nobody should be insular when they're developing crypto. Ask for feedback regularly and work with the community from day one.
[
It seems to me that so many mainstream people these days are using webmail, and checking their mail from all over the place - not just their own computers. So, if I can only sign my mail from my own computer, it's not going to be very effective (would people ignore my mail when it's not verified?) Until we have some type of easy, dongle-based mechanisms, I don't see how this can be very effective.
Some lying slimeball is exploiting the /. crowd to get some free publicity for his shitty commercial product.
So go ahead, tell this guy what you think.
-Fatty
On the contrary, my trollish friend. Unless you feel obligated to watch every line of g++ live, you'll find you have hours of time to take showers, cut your fingernails, go shopping for new clothes, find a hot date, yada etc and so on. Sure you can multitask, but who wants to interfere a box that is trying to update itself? Why interfere with beauty? That's like asking a kid in school who just asked the meaning of life to go rake leaves in the playground. ...When she has the book in front of her that could answer it, and a teacher who could explain it. Just Pointless.
On the contrary, you can and should take a break while your box compiles itself. That means, every time there's a new update of bashcomplete or KDE or something, BAM! hygene++. Fun++. Lifer0x0rs++. Learn_about_cryptography++. Cavities--.
Gentoo is about more than having optimized code. It's about a self-learning genius child in the making, who knows how to download her own dependencies. Linux is about more than being an evil super-villain, it's about freeing your mind. Unix is about more than hating Windows, it's about saving the world, and being cool. (Cool BSD chicks have always known this.)
So, my friend, pipe that emerge output to your printer, and hire a friend (or "emerge festival") to read it to you while you sleep, like the rest of us do. While it is tough, you will learn that you do not have to watch every line of output from emerge as it appears. Like all caring parents have to learn, you cannot spend every waking second of your life with your prodigous child. Your box might overoptimize once in a while, need to be told to recompile with a new use flag, or require a little etc-update from time to time, but you will discover that your sweet little gentoo is more resilient than it seems, and life goes on.
So, in light of our OCD friend's troll, I propose a toast, to showers, to prodigous super-children, to red leather, and to cavity free smiles!
Is there a moderation flag for "RTFA"?
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
What do you think will happen if someone, say in the name of the war on drugs, wants to interfere? Presto, they can convince the central server to yank Bob's key from the directory and replace it by one of their choosing. Some privacy!
That's like asking a kid in school who just asked the meaning of life to go rake leaves in the playground.
How zen.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why does an email proxy need to take over GDM/KDM? I think I'd *much* prefer to set up the proxy seperately and simply aim my mail client at it explicitly. I'd prefer to be able to easily aim it elsewhere when I feel like it without having to log out and modify system administration.
Allowing some closed-source commercial app (sorry, promises mean nothing: show me the source) to take over the login process and injecting an invisible proxy seems a par-tic-u-larly stupid way to solve the problem they are trying to deal with here.
Was Timothy duped into posting an ad accidentally, or was this intentional front page spam on slashdot's part?
8. PRIVACY Licensee hereby expressly agrees and acknowledges that Licensor may collect, store, disclose to third parties and otherwise use and process (collectively "Process") Personal Data in connection with the Services, this Agreement and Licensee's use of the Software, and Licensee hereby authorizes Licensor (including its officers, directors, employees and agents and its suppliers and licensors) to Process Personal Data to the extent reasonably required or useful in connection with the provision of the Services and/or the execution of this Agreement, and in compliance with Licensor's current privacy policy as shown on Licensor's website (www.ciphire.com).
whats that about?
From their Privacy Policy
"Otherwise, Ciphire Labs does not forward, sell, rent, loan, trade, or lease any personal information collected at our web site or via use of Ciphire software, including email lists, to any third party, except Ciphire Labs affiliates, without the expressed consent of the user."
Who, exactly are "Ciphire labs affiliates"?
I would expect to see a full list of affiliates as a condition prior giving them my personal e-mail address.
And, I would want a mechanism to prevent disclosure to new "affiliates" in addition to a way to opt-out.
I think I'd be pretty peeved if Spamford Wallace joined their ranks as an affiliate.
RD
just buy a certificate to make Ciphire work.
The OpenPGP equivalent to a certificate is called a "plane ticket" whose price is called "airfare." Without a plane ticket, you often can't get your public key signed by people in the strongly connected web of trust. Without a signed public key, you can't build the web of trust, and without the web of trust, you can't verify a public key, which is the whole point of certificates.
Because 99% of the /.ers are spoiled technology snobs that expect everything for free, yet provide nothing in return.
After all, PGP/GPG is good enough for geeks, imagine if regular people started using it? Better to release a governement created cryptosystem and make it easy enough for those masses of real people to use. Then once the real people are using it, some of the geeks will switch too, and the NSA can start reading everyone's e-mail again. ;-)
</conspiracy>
The disconnect between a cryptographic program processing every one of your emails, and a license clause that says the author of same basically gives himself carte blanche to sniff whatever they damn well please should be enough to put anyone off this thing.
From the article:
"CCD servers are part of a central infrastructure operated by Ciphire Labs."
The end-user advantage to this system seems not to be transparent encryption - a relatively simple hack one may apply to this or that MTA - but to the automagic sharing of keys and transparent negotiation. Entrusting these keys to a centralised architecture seems contrary to any `secure' as we lose the benefits of community audit and so on. Furthermore, since Ciphire is a corporation in Germany (it seems from their Disclaimer page) all servers become a single point of failure both technically and politically.
Creating a client-client system of key negotiation seems like a better investment of time: creating a system that automatically queries other clients for their identifiers, not a central medium. Although there is still no sure guarantee that keys are reliable the key source's identity may be reasonably verified - more so, at least, than a server that operates at the whims of its administrators. Developers of PKI (a now-marketspeak term) could learn a thing or two from the No-Trust mantra of anonymous net developers - from Tor to Mute, Chaum mixes, P5, tree hashes and so on (not to mention the poor venerable, FreeNet).
The verdict: Ciphire is a good idea in general and a fine solution for internal security in companies (across different sites), but difficult to justify as a standard due to its closed nature.
And are also as "user friendly"
But then we were directed to a Wired article from a guy who "reboots an application"
Also, without peer review of the code, and some kind of OpenSource model, how on earth can this be trusted?
".Ciphire Labs also intends to release the source code to.."
Sure, and PGP is free, remember??
Oh, you don't?
Look up some history.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I send emails which I wouldn't necessarily want shown to everyone, but very, very few of them really SHOULD be enctypted. I have a feeling that the vast majority of people who use encryption systems for their emails really don't need them -- they're just used to get a cool-looking "this email has been encrypted; here's my fingerprint" block in the signature. It's fun to *play* at being a spy, or thinking I have super-important stuff which shouldn't be seen by undeserving eyes, but it's mainly just that: fun.
Let the flamin' begin.
If so, become a shareholder, gives you more opportunities to kvetch about matters at the shareholders meetings. Most stockholders never ever say or do anything about their holdings, and there are opportunities to explore there. You can completely bypass the normal "chain of command" then, because you are part owner.
"Security" should be of prime concern in any company, and if they are using insecure or harder to secure and more expensive software products for their business, or ignoring some obvious ways to improve matters, then that's a verylegit gripe from a shareholders POV, something to hold over the various executives there. Due dilligence and whatnot. Of course you'll need some sort of critical mass awareness with many other shareholders to make it stick, just pointing out another option to use in the workplace.
If it's a government place, good luck, even though you would think it might be better, it appears most government agencies are run by the lowest common denominator intel. I have not much advice along those lines. Private companies though, I think anyone "you" are in a better position to get changes done, as long as there is a real problem that can be pointed to, along with some solutions offered. At least you can get it on the record and other stockholders might take notice.
Nice thing, but I think they are not doing things right.
Looking at those diagrams they show, it appears that they provide is a "replacement" for S/MIME or OpenPGP, when IMHO they should have built on top of one of them.
The main advantage of OpenPGP or S/MIME is not the ease of use, it's the fact that both standards (and the most important implementations) have been extensively reviewed for flaws. That cannot be said for their "new" system.
As for ease of use, I use enigmail (openPGP) and once configured it's pretty easy to use, although it does not retrieve keys automatically.
I would have preferred a key retrival system (properly documented, of course) capable of retrieving keys for use in enigmail (I guess something that reads the recipient address and get the keys from the keyserver), rather that a completely new crypto program.
I wouldn't consider using it right now because it's new and mostly untested. Let's see what happens when they release the code and is analyzed (I'd love to see Bruce Schneier's reaction in crypto-gram).
Who knows, maybe it's good or maybe it's snake oil, but right now I have one of the best publicly available crypto in the world. Why would I want to switch?
GPG 0x1B479C78
First he gave the kids trinoo, and now cares about our sekj00r1ty. I won't even have a look at this one.
What concerns me are comments like the following: "Each Ciphire certificate is reduced to a hash, an abbreviated mathematical identifier. Since the relationship between the hash and the certificate is reciprocal, the original hash would not match a certificate in which there was even the slightest change."
Not so fast: (a) certificates already have a signed hash; (b) it is common practice to state which hashing algorithm is used (SHA, MD5, ...?). I hope its not homegrown hash; and (c) by definition, hash values have collision where more than one certificate can map to the same hash value.
Just cause its an open-source wannabe doesn't mean its good for you. Let's hope for the best.
Mike www.sharecube.com
The source will be open. The security will be real.
But it won't save you any money on car insurance.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Woman centric amateur erotica, forums, reviews, & more! ActualLove.com
I'm sorry, but I'm not a homosexual. I prefer real pornography.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Please mod that AC up.
He's right, and shows it in a very creative way.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Does no-one else have a problem with this?
From the wired article (http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,66 324,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3):
"The Ciphire Mail application, free for individual users, nonprofit organizations and the press, works in conjunction with all standard e-mail programs."
I dont like this 'free for' bullshit, its either free for everyone or it isn't. If it isn't then I'm not interested.
I didn't even realize that Enigmail allows you to create keys (I actually created mine on the CLI) & the only complaint that is left is the quote-unquote difficulty of installing GPG under windows (it isn't hard--there are installers, such as the one for WinPT).
All this encryption is great for spammers, as it will render most scanning methods useless.
Sure, the encryption can be used to only allow trusted email addresses, etc...but the headaches involved in defending against spam in this set up will make it too much trouble for the average user.
"Please note that Ciphire Mail requires a graphical environment, i.e., an X session, in the default configuration. Support for text-mode use is currently very limited and not recommended for normal use. This will be improved in in future versions of Ciphire Mail."
What does a graphical environment have to do with encrypting email? Can you say poor design?
Some experts think that since DES has withstood so many years of scrutiny, and there still no atack significantly better than brute force, that triple-DES may be a better choice than AES, Twofish, and Serpent, none of which have yet been subject to a comparable amount of cryptanalysis. Yet triple-DES isn't in the list on the ciphers page. Why not?
No offence, but every user should be aware when something is encrypted, and they should be explicitly telling it to be encrypted.
What if "Alice sends an email to Bob" assuming it will be encrypted but "Bob doesn't have a registered public key" so the message is sent normally?
It seems like the easy way to hack this is to block access to the key server so it sends mail unencrypted everytime?
I'm not sure, the website wasn't too informative. Either way, it doesn't get much simpiler than having a "Sign" and "Encrypt" checkbox for GPG. I don't see how this is a good idea at all.
Spammers would have to look up everyone's keys and encrypt every piece of mail individually; and even worse for them, they'd have to send every piece of mail individually. The resources required to do this in the volume spammers currently spam would be tremendous, perhaps beyond even the reach of a large zombie network.
Cryptosystem is more than just what algorithms you use, its how they are implimented, how keys are generated, how they are managed, what your random source is, etc. All that combined is a cryptosystem. There's nothing "system" about just a plain old algorithm on its own.
I don't know what they have been using on theeir linux boxes, but it was time to upgrade about one year ago!
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
It's source is open and crossplatform. Someone (Novell?) port it to Evolution before Evo is ported to Windows.
--
make install -not war
The reason that crypto can never really be made 100% convenient is Zooko's triangle: you want the name by which you refer to your correspondant to be memorable, globally unique, and free from centralized control, but you can't have all three (see also Clay Shirky's restatement of this idea). So if you want to use email addresses, someone has to be the centralized authority from which is ultimately derived your right to state that you are the legitimate recipient of a certain email.
If we had DNSSEC - if domain authorities routinely certified DNSSEC public keys with the same authority by which they allow name server records to change - then this would mean the central authority was at least doing their job properly and we could use it to build an email infrastructure. But then people wouldn't pay Verisign for certificates, so that would never do.
Xenu loves you!
At least on windows one has to do more clicks than a normal user would do to cipher / decipher a mail with GPG (at least using Opera - haven't checked other browsers cause I won't change).
Ciphire works really transparently, seems to catch any SMTP/POP3 traffic which goes through your network adapters.
Only problem I had: my GPG key was already published for the specific mail address, and I wasn't able to find a way to import existing keys - so I uninstalled Ciphire again.
F**k, at first I've been real happy...
I lag
First off, tell me. Which standards does PGP [or SSH and SSL for that matter] follow? They ALL started off as homebrew projects.
. html
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/openpgp-charter
Many times, a project gets started, then a standard follows and other implementations begin to appear. Javascript started off as Netscape's project. Then the ECMA scripting standard got finalized afterwards. That doesn't mean we should just all ignore the standard. Open standards are one of the few pieces of leverage small companies and open source authors have against big corporations like Microsoft.
If having a single robot that does no more id-checking than verify an email address, is sufficent "proof" against MitM attacks for you, then PGP/GPG can do this too. There are already some robots out there who will sign your OpenPGP key. Check out RobotCA or Imperialviolet email verifyer. And last month another one appeared, the PGP Global Directory, which sets new standards for how dumb and reckless a robot can be.
The advantage of using these PGP-based robots over this Ciphire thingie, is that if in the future you decide that you want more security, you can have real life human beings sign your PGP key. Indeed, the really cool thing about PGP is that you can have lots of people sign your key, instead of like x.509 (and apparently Ciphire) where certification is all-or-nothing situation: you either trust the certifying authority or don't.
Stick to OpenPGP. Don't want the hassles or privacy invasion of "real" keysigning? Ok, just get signed by a robot. Then upload your robot-signed key to the keyservers. And then download the robot's key and set it to be a trusted introducer. Just as good, and better.
They should have made their system OpenPGP compatible and built on the existing infrastructure, instead of going off and re-inventing the square wheel.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
[...] and in compliance with Licensor's current privacy policy as shown on [...]
I think its pretty innovative, and contributes something positive. A lot of the comments are on the lines of pgp / whatever respected cryptographic tool will do a decent job on signing / encypting / decrypting - we can all agree on this However where we need to evaluate systems is on how easy it is to sign a message, get a key pair, to get the certificate of your correspondent, renew their certificate etc The email proxy server architecture seems a really neat way to handle the cryptographic functions and the client side of certificate management - the central certificate repository seems a good way to distribute certs and handle cert status I dont think there's anything about the system that is fundamentally insecure but I would be interested in the trust relationship between the email client and proxy server is implemented. Also will the centralised repository scale if the system becomes popular? Imagine how many certificate issuing & status requests that thing would need to cope with if it got popular
Like I said, "it helps protect those of us who already take it seriously (it's a needle in a haystack sort of thing)"
For this and the other reasons you stated, I fully support the idea of wanton encryption, but in practice "Jane and Joe Sixpack" (the great-grandparent's comment, which I was replying to) don't give a crap. Even if it's turned on in Outlook by default, they'll get tech support (or their kids) to turn it off because passwords and keyrings are too much trouble for them. Yes, I suppose you could remove the password and use a local keyfile, then have some kind of centralized server that Outlook asked whenever it needed a public key, but let's be realistic here... M$ isn't going to spend a lot of money--and severely piss off the NSA--just to include a feature that the vast majority of their customers will not care about.
On the other hand, the Linux camp might create such a system... but only once Linux becomes more popular with Jane and Joe Sixpack.
Using Enigmail, you only have to enter your pass phrase to decrypt an email if you have it set to automatically decrypt/verify your messages.
fake pgp
Its fun and stupuud.
I tried it.
The problem is: I run my own mailserver and everything is done via SSL or TLS (IMAP, SMTP, Webmail, too). As Ciphire redirects all traffic to the internal proxy, the certificates don't match anymore and you just get a lot of freakin' error-boxes everytime you send or receive something.
In short:
- yes, it works
- no, I'm not interested - I know how to use GPG, thank you.
cheers,
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"The Ciphire Mail client resides on your computer, between your email client and your email server, transparently encrypting/decrypting and digitally signing your email communication."
This is good in theory, but bad in practice. I used to do front-line tech support for a small ISP. The vast majority of issues regarding checking mail (esp. "no socket" errors from the mail client) involved local email anti-virus proxies from pretty much every vendor at some point. This includes so-called "transparent" proxies popular now from Symantec (and I think McAfee as well), and ones you had to reconfigure your mail client for (like PC-Cillin, I believe). In all cases I saw, the proxies appeared to be configured correctly, they just went into "mumble" mode and refused to pass the traffic through them, even after a reboot. It happened more times than I can count.
So, in summary, concept good, but execution (on Windows, at least) will be ultimately (most likely) be a hassle for the end-user.
What a waste of time.
Why use a closed source mail proxy with unknown flaws and backdoors while there are proven open source packages available for the task?
Tiger Envelopes offers everything (and more!) that ciphire does and it's open source.
summary:
- TE is open source and has gotten quite some peer review
- CH is closed source as of now
- TE supports GnuPG, PGP and BouncyCastle
- CH supports only unknown, proprietary encryption
So, who do you trust?
Due to the nature of the Fingerprint List (FPL), which is a really unique feature of Ciphire Mail, that won't be possible. Or rather: It would be possible but won't go unnoticed. As soon as Alice, Bob or any other user of Ciphire Mail sends an email, the client automatically checks the current FPL and would notice that the database has been compromised.
/. (especially german ones). And only the proxy could be able to associate lookups to email addresses with an above 0 probability.
As for the lookup of certificates: First, the client caches lookup results for three days, so Ciphire wouldn't see how many mails Alice sent to Bob. Second, the lookup is done with a semi-anonymous token, not with the full certificate of Alice, so actually, Ciphire can't really tell wether Alice made the lookup or someone else who happens to have the same lookup token as Alice. Third, there will be lookup servers (proxies) run by external entities. In fact, the first external proxy is already set up and will probably announced soon. It's going to be run by an entity which I assume is highly trusted among geeks readers of
cu,
sven
At least on windows one has to do more clicks than a normal user would do to cipher / decipher a mail with GPG (at least using Opera - haven't checked other browsers cause I won't change).
If you don't have a password to protect your keys, Enigmail can be made completely transparent -- just set it to sign by default and to encrypt if the recipient is on your keyring, and you wouldn't notice it except for a slight pause after you hit send.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
http://sites.inka.de/tesla/gpgrelay.html Looks like this GPG based project tries to get a nearly similar functionality with GnuPG. A relay server between your mail client and the mail server. Works without flaws since many months. The only thing I complain about is the lacking support of IMAP. Cheers D.
The fact that source code is not immediately available should raise some serious red flags.
o .h tml
Moreover, their crypto algorithms page says some alarming things:
https://www.ciphirebeta.com/cm/technology/crypt
For example, that page says:
Ciphire uses a recursive asymmetric padding mechanims to ensure that asymmetrically encrypted data is absolutely random. This protects against attacks such as the Bleichenbacher attack.
Umm... If the data you were encrypting were actually random, you could not decrypt it. Encryption padding is a serious issue, and if these guys were doing it properly, they would specify which heuristically proven padding scheme they are using (e.g., OAEP+, OAEP++, whatever).
Misunderstanding the meaning of the word "random" is a classic warning sign that people don't understand crypto.
Moreover, they claim to be using SHA-256 as their signature padding scheme for RSA. Again, this is is not a valid padding scheme for signatures. You can use "full domain hash", but then you need something whose output is as large as the public key, which SHA-256 definitely isn't. Better schemes include variants of the PSS padding scheme.
Note moreover that serpent is hardly a "standard" encryption algorithm. While the alrorithm has no known flaws, it's a little disturbing that in their AES submission, the authors did not do any security analysis under various well-known classes of attack (such as linear and differential cryptoanalysis). While serpent may be a fine algorithm, it just hasn't been studied well enough to stick into a product like this at this time.
Yet another very strange design decision: "All public-private key pairs have a size of 2048 bit." The NSA is known to have purchased systems with security equivalent to 16K-bit keys. Fixing the key length at 2K bits is hardly a very forward-looking design decision.
The choice of ASN.1 for specifying the certificates is also hardly optimal, given ASN.1's unnecessary complexity and the history of implementation errors in various ASN.1 parsers.
Anyway, I'd be *extremely* wary of relying on this software at this point.
Is "mixter" the same German cracker who brought us such net clogging BS as the Tribal Flood Network? see: http://www.iss.net/security_center/ advice/Underground/Hackers/Mixter/default.htm http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1549399.html Put security code pimped by this guy on my box....NOT
This is the bit I dont like. Read the from the master himself, Philip Zimmermann - the one who was under 3 year investigation by US customs. Reading through Phils articles, I came across Beware of Snake Oil. It makes for good reading when evaluating if the product is worth the effort.
My question is if you cant read the source (massive assumption given few know how to write and implement encryption) how do you know if the code is implemented correctly?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
MOD THIS COMMENT DOWN, This guy doesn't understand the difference between SSL and SSH SSH doesn't use certificates. Certificates are what makes SSL superior to SSH. Certificates make things MORE secure not less. Why ou think it's just a money making scheme is beyond me. Yes, there are CAs and yes they get paid, but that's unavoidable with a certificate based system. Furthermore, if you're using this as part of your own system inside a corporation or some other organizaton, you don't need to pay for certs at all. You are just spouting ignorance here promoting a less secure certificateless method over a more secure one. Not just that, but you FAIL TO REALIZE that OpenPGP includes trust metrics and people signing keys, which is a similar concept to certificates. SSH has no such thing.
I think what most threads that ask "why not use GPG/PGP/Enigmail/etc" are not seeing is that the problem the Ciphire people are trying to fix is that of key exchange, not actual encryption/decryption.
Currently, that I know of, no email encryption plugin/system like the ones mentioned here make it completely transparent for users to fetch other people's public keys and use them to encrypt mail. Usually you have to first get someone's public key, either from them or by checking a server (like MIT PGP repository, etc) that does not necessarily do any kind of verification. So I could get a key for "foo@bar.com" even if I don't own that address. Then there can be multiple keys for foo@bar.com and you have to physically check with the recipient for the right fingerprint. And in any case I can only choose to encrypt email that is being sent to people of whom I know I have their correct keys.
The whole point of Ciphire is that it will try to encrypt if possible without the user having to worry about any of that. And yes, they are a centralized CA, but you don't actually have to completly trust them either. Check their technical intro page for a summary of their nifty hash fingerprinting mechanism for verifying certificate integrity.
And as some people have pointed out, you don't have to install a plugin, it works by using TCP hooks (not a server process either). So ideally more and more people (including non-techies) could just install it and forget, and eventually more and more email will start being sent encrypted (as more users register).
The only downside is, it breaks webmail.
Having seen crypto development over the years and seeing various vulnerabilities in crypto implementation, new products should be always welcomed with caution. History on attacks on GPG has shown even when the source is open, it would take someone with(crypto) know how and time to spare to figure out something is broken. How could we trust some code which is written by someone who is never known to (public) crypto world ?
PGP/GPG is very easy. Just send out your key, and people can mail you. Encrypting mail just requires a single keypress, and all the decryption is done automatically and transparently.
Oh, wait you say, it isn't that easy? You have all sorts of troubles using PGP? It requires some bizarre gizmo that you copy/paste with?
That's because you're using the most worthless pile of shit excuse for an email program in the history of the world: Microsoft Outbreak.
99.9% of all real problems with GPG are Outbreak. I am not kidding. More or less every useful Unix email program has functional GPG support. Mozilla has functional (though annoying) GPG support. Even that piece of junk Eudora has some kind of semi-functional broken GPG support.
The one standout is Outbreak. It works like ass at PGP-type mail. Absolute, utter ass, broken in every way.
I was on a project once where we had to use PGP to talk to another company (at their request). That company used Outbreak. Every time I sent them an email encoded using 100% RFC compliant PGP-mime encoding, they whined, because their worthless junk emailer couldn't read it. Their emails to me were encoded using some retarded inline-placement that hasn't been seen since the early '90s. It violated every known RFC, forcing me to resort to procmail scripts to turn Outbreak Garbage PGP into barely parseable real PGP. Half the time even that didn't work, because they ended up sending me PGP ascii armor pasted into an HTML mail message, the result being too unbelievably trashed for any known mail reader to process.
And of course, let's not forget the instability. I once got a call, the basic gist of which being: "What did you do to my Outbreak?! I tried to send you an email and Outbreak crashed when I hit encrypt!"
There aren't really any problems with PGP. The protocol and security is excellent. The problem is with these worthless Windows email pieces of crap, that can't implement simple mime encoding or key management properly, and apparently give their sadly misguided users the impression that somehow it's PGP's fault that their Microsoft email client is a load of dog crap.
And let's not even get into the incredible brokenness of webmail systems such as hotmail and gmail.
isn't this what geam does. ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/geam/
Slashdot had a story a while back about a free certificate authority with identities assured by meeting personally with already assured members. It actually sounds like better assurance than what you get with Verisign.
It's really unfortunate that even a tool *this easy* won't get picked up many "non-geeks." Anyone who's tried to get a friend up to speed on GPG knows this. Look, let's be honest. How many people do you send encrypted mail to? That aren't CS majors or have CS degrees? Who sends encrypted mail *regularly* to friends (not your coding buddies) and family members? I send encrypted mail to one (1) person. I would love to play around with all the nifty GPG features, make a social network, etc. But look: nobody wants to take the time to learn the protocol! Let's face it. In the real world (not slashdot), suggesting GPG for email is pretty abnormal. I'm curious: has anyone convinced non-slashdot-types to use PGP like tools? How on earth did you convince them?
Ciphire might be 'the good guys' but how can you tell?
You can tell the contrary easily enough. No source code. In fact, no point to this whole article. Ciphire does not compete with GPG.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Two more things I'd like to point out about the project.
:) We know and understand.
It was clear to all the participants that a release which
isn't open source right away would be seen by many
people with doubts. I'd even have them myself, if I
hadn't seen the source.
This is just an early release, where we wait for user
feedback, optimize good parts of the code for
extensibility and audits, and then, do such audits,
then, it's a promise, you'll get the code, not GPL, but
definitely open source. We expect quite some people
to forget about this now and wait until then. However,
if you don't code-review your other OSS, counting on
peer review, you might as well use it now, as it _has_
even now already been peer reviewed by others.
About the license and being 'free' - this is a company,
but as little as commercial as possible - the aim is
really a community of enlightened crypto users.
Ciphire will, always, stay FREE for end-users, and
non-commercial institutions. We need to earn money
to run servers and maintain code. We will charge from
companies for company-editions eventually for that.
We need a business license to be on the safe side for
that, too, but there's nothing unusual about it.
Btw - we will not forever have or want to run these
servers alone - while they're not fully decentralized,
they are not centralized as well, they just need to sync
so that certificate information is globally unique. Your
public key on those servers can never be manipulated
either, even if we wanted (see FAQ).
I'm not going into every detail or question here, but I'd
like to point out that there are official Ciphire forums,
where really everything asked is answered, fast:
forum.ciphire.com
Thanks for your attention:)
As a former practicing cryptologist when I see "Ciphire Mail is the world's most powerful email security tool" on the Ciphire web site, it tells me that these people have no clue. How do they know it is the most powerful? Have they compared it with all of the other solutions? For example, I know of a company that produces tables of random numbers (not pseudo-random), but numbers generated by radioactive decay as measured with a Geiger counter. Two matching CDs are made, and a preselected table or tables of 512 bytes is XORed with the plaintext. A sufficient number of tables are used to ensure that the key length is equal to the plaintext length. I would ask the Ciphire cryptologist to explain how their cipher is stronger. Given adequate physical security control of the key CDs, this system is invulnerable. This system even uses two separate computers at each end with a non-bootable media holding the plaintext/ciphertext to ensure that a proper red/black interface is maintained.
This is but one of several systems I am aware of commerically that I have seen the cryptanalysis on. FOr Ciphire to assert they have the strongest system is either ego, ignorance or maliciousness.
Let the buyer beware.
Nope, nor is open source about low cost. Open source is about transparency. Low cost and a variety of alternatives are incidental.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
The Ciphire CA keeps logs of everyone you send email to, whether they are Ciphire users or not. And according to the 'Technical' Review, they use this information for "email traffic analysis" (see page 27).
Is it just me or does the combination of a centralized key server and closed source mean they could implement escrow by simply batting their eylashes, and the users wouldn't have a clue?
That technical review is a hoot. For example, check this out on page 20: "X.509 certificates [also applies to PGP keys] allow multiple email addresses to be associated with the same public key, but this is undesirable." Really? I find it quite desirable, actually. Subjective statements like that have no place in a scientific document. I can't figure why Furguson & Housley let their names be used for this.