Wikileaks Sidesteps Publishing Public PGP Key

An anonymous reader writes "Repeated requests toward the Wikileaks staff regarding their use of PGP have gone unanswered. The current public PGP key posted has been expired since November 2nd, 2007. A response on their PGP talk page notes that the 'SSL based mail submission system' will be the secure online method of document submission. At the current time, there is no method to safely encrypt any postal communications with Wikileaks or verify that any given communication actually originated from a Wikileaks staff member." Doubtless there are some complicating factors here -- but what is the best way to keep a confidentiality-centric site like Wikileaks trustworthy?

Comments

I wish the world would use GPG more

[CRCulver]

A decade ago, every geek had a PGP key, keysigning parties were a great way to spend a Friday night, and everyone was raving about Schneier's eggheaded but useful tome Applied Cryptography . Now when I ask otherwise normal geeks if they have a PGP key, they just look at me like I'm from Mars. I don't understand, PGP has gotten only easier to use, there's a great Firefox extension for it, but it has faded in popularity.

Re:I wish the world would use GPG more

[Anonymous Coward]

There is the problem of webmail.

I know there are extensions to firefox to get s/mime support, PGP and a few other (proprietary) methods of encrypting emails, but you don't always have ontrol over the browser you're using.

I'd love to use encryption on my email, but if I can't read it, there's no point.

Re:I wish the world would use GPG more

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time that I used PGP/GnuPG for all my e-mails. But at some point I realized that this only gave me the impression that I had real privacy. Most of the recipients run Windows and they open those e-mails and files on their insecure machines.
Also, what has changed is that nowadays the reason I want more privacy is because of the government and not because of regular people/crooks. And there are various ways in which the government could still read my files even when I use encryption, both by checking my screen and what I type.
Finally, even when encryption would be really secure right now, if they keep the files for 10 years, there's still the possibility that they may be able to open them. That's not real privacy to me.
The same goes for people who use Skype because they know it encrypts their conversations. But, of course the government can listen in on those conversations when they really want that, and of course eBay won't tell you about that, because then they'd lose many customers.

Re:I wish the world would use GPG more

[Anonymous Coward]

why isn't it automatic? Because the most bothersome part of all cryptographic systems is also the most important part: key management. Both trust architectures, web of trust and hierarchic trust, require that trust relations are established by verifying keys/certificates. Hierarchic trust centralizes the verification. The certificate authorities do all the work, so they want compensation. The web of trust distributes the work among its participants. Consequently it's usually free, but you have to do work. That's why it's not automatic.

Re:I wish the world would use GPG more

[RKBA]

You don't need any special web client, browser plug-in, or anything else to use PGP. Although I do sometimes use a GnuPgp extension to Thunderbird, I mostly just use the older versions of PGP that let you encrypt/decrypt, sign/verify, etc., either the contents of the clipboard or a text file. I then simply copy/paste the encrypted/signed message text file into the email I'm sending. The encryption/decryption can be totally separate from the email client.

There isn't

[binaryspiral]

Doubtless there are some complicating factors here -- but what is the best way to keep a confidentiality-centric site like Wikileaks trustworthy?

Unfortunately, there isn't - information is only as trustworthy as the source.

The issue is more than encrypting and signing

[Kevinv]

Once documents have been leaked, organizations know they can't put the cat back in the bag but they want to close the bag to prevent further escapes. Sure they sue but they sue to get the names of submitters (i.e. Apple vs. Think Secret, or Craig what's his name at Microsoft threatening to find the leaker of the Halloween documents via secret Exchange magic)

Wikileaks appears to want to provide a way for submitters to deny they even submitted anything to Wikileaks. Sending an e-mail to wikileaks with the contents encrypted is a clear indication that you're sending something to them. By the time the leaks are made public all they want to do is find the person, searching for something that sent pgp encrypted mail, even without being able to decrypt the actual contents, is going to be good enough for them.

An ssl page, especially if wikileaks sets up some sort of drop system with other domains so you aren't obviously submitting to wikileaks, is much harder to track because people use ssl pages all over the internet all the time. If PGP were used more frequently then they could probably use that with a drop system as well, but it's just too rarely used.

Re:The issue is more than encrypting and signing

[syzler]

An ssl page, especially if wikileaks sets up some sort of drop system with other domains so you aren't obviously submitting to wikileaks, is much harder to track because people use ssl pages all over the internet all the time.

Why would you submit something to Wikileaks from your organization's network or through your organization's mail servers? I would think that act alone would scream, "Fire me," at the top of its figurative lungs to your soon to be ex-employers.

Re:The issue is more than encrypting and signing

[syzler]

If an organization has security so tight that an individual is unable to carry a medium such as a sheet of paper, a thumb drive, digital camera, mp3 player, or cell phone off the premise, I seriously doubt the organization would allow the individual unrestricted access to the public Internet from within the organization's network.

Re:Whoo boy

[kestasjk]

It makes sense, really. Anything you send to WikiLeaks you intend to be told to everyone.

I think what they mean by "provides proof of intention to conceal" is that they don't want people leaking something and then saying "aha! You just told everyone something that I meant to be kept private, I'm going to sue! Why would I have encrypted it if I had meant you to release it?"

And that person would have a point. It's hard to think how someone could post something to WikiLeaks, so that it can be publicly posted, but desire that their information be transmitted encrypted. The assumption should always be anything you send to WikiLeaks is public, and allowing encrypted submissions may make this unclear.
If they need to submit the information anonymously they should do it anonymously, PGP can't help with that.

Re:Whoo boy

[DaffyDuck101]

Quite obviously they (the submitters) would like to be able to deny they sent the information in the first place. PGP or not is not going to help a lot with that.

"Proof of intention to conceal" would refer to the fact that when the next scandal at ACME is published, and only one of their faithful employees ever used PGP as evidenced by their router logs, that would constitute enough proof to sue, even without being able to read the actual contents of the mail.

So what the nice folks at wikileaks are saying is that you might as well ditch PGP and use web-based SSL forms so you can just claim you were paying your annual Playboy magazine subscription, or whatever. Or you could send all your mail with PGP and try to convince everybody else to do so as well.

So yes, PGP isn't going to do you much good, but not for the reasons you stated.

Re:Whoo boy

[ceejayoz]

I think you're misunderstanding them.

I read it as "the Chinese or other totalitarian governments might punish you solely for using PGP".

gmail won't support it.

[Dr_Barnowl]

The gmail revenue stream depends on targeted advertising, which means they need to have a daemon read your mail. If they supported encryption as standard, they'd be cutting off some not-insignificant portion of that revenue ; regardless of how much they'd like to support the feature, their responsibilities are to their shareholders ; unless they can find a way of making equivalent or greater revenue from encrypted mail, they can't field it as a feature.

I can't envisage an encrypted mail service that has an externalized revenue source, so the only way to fund it is by the customer paying. Which then begs the question, who do you trust enough to pay them to keep your secrets safe? In my case, I no secrets worth keeping, but if I did, I wouldn't trust anyone else to keep them for me.

Open-source, peer-reviewed encryption, under my own control, is the only technique I would trust to keep digital secrets transmitted across a wire.

The best kept secrets are of course the ones you keep solely in your own head.

there isn't

[kris.montpetit]

Doubtless there are some complicating factors here -- but what is the best way to keep a confidentiality-centric site like Wikileaks trustworthy?

There isn't. By verifying that anyone is anyone the cover is blown. Regardless the best use of it is still to post anonymously and link as many people as humanly possible. Then even if your cover is blown, the message still gets out. If you're a whistleblower, this is something you should have accepted long before you blew the whistle

Re:Reading between the lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed - or a UK member of staff has been forced to turn the old key over under the terms of RIPA, and Wikileaks are interpreting RIPA's provisions in such a way as to be sure to keep that staff member out of prison.

Another option

[TheSpengo]

Well, since people can't use PGP with their regular email addresses anymore to correspond with wikileaks, what's stopping them from making a dummy gmail account or something? It takes all of a couple seconds and that way you don't even have your regular email address associated with them at all.

Re:Secure proof of sending, reading

[WuphonsReach]

I'm in a situation where I need to *prove* that someone has opened/read an email. I know there are paid "registered email" services, but they seem a bit overkill to me. And return receipts are jokes, since they aren't widely supported.

The short answer is "don't try to make SMTP do something that it wasn't designed to do".

The long answer - send people unique links to a web server that you control.

Re:Whoo boy

[spottedkangaroo]

That's silly, you don't have to distribute the private key, that's the whole point.

Take the wikileak's SSL key. How do you know that's their private key and it's not a MiM attack? You know that because verisign (or someone) signed the public key. They did that with a private key -- and wikileak doesn't have it!! Oh nos!!!

There's always a private key you don't have. That's the whole point of asymetric cryptography. PGP is no different.

So this argument is all very silly.