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Symantec To Acquire PGP and GuardianEdge
An anonymous reader noticed the news that Symantec has bought PGP and Guardian Edge for $370 million. They plan to standardize their encryption stuff on PGP keys.
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GPG is out there { http://www.gnupg.org/ } and we should use it.
Privacy is a human right. Democracy can't work if it's citizens are controlled like slaves in the roman empire.
Freedom is ours to take! Long live the RPG!
GnuPG is what you're looking for.
Not off-topic at all.
Symantec will more than likely manage to screw this up just like they screw everything else up. Seriously, once upon a time their virus stuff was good. Now, you've gotta jump through hoops to remove it, their enterprise-level customer service is garbage, so I can only imagine how bad their home user support must be, and at some point their code base for the AV stuff grew so bloated you could run a Toyota (poorly) off it.
What's wrong with pointing out that they're simply gonna screw it up?
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I was specifically talking about PGP vs. GPG.
import system.cool.Sig;
TrueCrypt is reliable, reputable, fast, free, open source, and works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
The TrueCrypt documentation is very good, but not perfect.
TrueCrypt can encrypt a file that contains other files (a drive letter) or encrypt an entire partition, even the boot partition.
No one I know has any connection with TrueCrypt. We are just happy users.
OSS alternatives?
If you want basic signing and not using smart cards, gpg is very good. Hard disk encryption, TrueCrypt is the utility for Windows.
But unfortunately, there are features that PGP has that you are not going to find in other places, and most have to deal with business/enterprise level requirements. Some examples:
Smart card support, especially on boot.
Ability to use smart cards to sign/decrypt PGP format files.
Whole disk encryption on the Mac. One can say FileVault is good for that, but there are laptop thieves more interested in what license keys a Mac has (so they can "borrow" them) than what is in someone's home directory.
Key servers.
Key recovery.
Enterprise infrastructure requirements. These don't matter to individuals, but the ability to recovery data using an ADK is crucial for regulatory compliance in some cases.
Hard disk encryption with multiple passphrases.
I'm sorry to say, but I hope Symantec treats their product lines well. It will suck if this is lost.
It *is* uniform if you pick one of the available GUI's and standardize on it.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
PGP co-founder takes OS security job with Apple
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/jon_callas_joins_apple/
GnuPG (gpg) is the underlying tools and libraries. As locklin states parralel to me, there are plenty of GUIs out there.
Have a look but realize that there are even more out there, these are just the hilights.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Truecrypt is not the same thing as PGP/GPG. Truecrypt is great, mind you, but it is not public key cryptography and signing, with web-of-trust. It's just data encryption and hiding.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Short version - Phil Zimmerman wrote PGP. PGP incorporated the RSA algorithm. This got the feds after him for violation of the Arms Export Control Act, because strong crypto was considered munitions. Sanity prevailed after about three years and a bunch of lawyers' bills. A slightly longer version is here in the Wikipedia article on PGP.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.