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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?
Generally we recommend against using PGP in its simplest form, since the traffic is easily detected and provides proof of intention to conceal, which depending on the context may pose a significant difficulty. - emph mine
Gut reaction to that statement makes me feel a bit queasy.
What?
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.
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.
Expiration of PGP keys is a feature and does not prevent the key from being used in the future (although it should not be considered secure if used after the expiration date). The purpose is to prevent the impact of a compromised key by limiting its validity period.
Expiry can also be useful in the event that a private key is lost. Revocation of a public key requires access to the private keys.
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.