No idea how I’m supposed to take this ranty blog needlessly interspersed with furry cartoons seriously. But it’s basically just restating (poorly) all the same criticisms and alternatives written about here: https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/
The ‘real’ criticisms of PGP are that it’s old, it’s clunky, and it doesn’t support forward secrecy by design. None of that is invalid, but I think the importance of those points depends on the use case and user.
The alternatives given are myriad and complexity and clunkiness are interspersed between dozens of solutions instead of well understood and documented in one tool.
That isn’t a superior approach. I’m not arguing that PGP is perfect, but it’s absolutely asinine to suggest (like this blog and others suggest) that the solution is to use dozens of other solutions with their own problems and with less auditing.
If we’re going to replace PGP, we need to do it properly in a centralized library/toolchain. Breaking up the solution and spreading it around just magnifies the problems.
Take it as a ranty blog interspaced with some furry art.
You can just ignore the furry art if it’s not your style because helpfully all of the important content is in the text.
Soatok links to the same Latacora blog on the first line and says that they’re only really going to reword what’s said there.
I’m not here to litigate the demerits of PGP. The Latacora article I linked above makes the same arguments I would make today, and is a more entertaining read.
PGP/GPG maintainers have had many years to fix the problems that have been identified but they haven’t. Is it safe when used “properly”? Yes! It’s absolutely safe when used properly but the problem is it’s hard to use full stop.
I’m not saying modern solutions are perfect, because they’re not but the alternates that Latacora ( and Soatok ) suggest are better. Do you want to encrypt a file? Use age. Use minisign/signify for signing. They do do one thing and do it well. Signal is easy to use and sorts all of the key management for you. Most people don’t know what a private key is. They just know they want encrypted messaging because of the NSA or Snowden or whatever his name was on the news, they can’t remember and they don’t really care.
PGP has legitimate use cases but the vast majority of people don’t have those cases and should just use Signal. Signal and the Signal protocol is the centralised tool you’re looking for.
Can signify and minisign integrate with git for commit signing? Would anyone be able to verify it with a glance in web ui like it works right now ootb with gpg and every git forge? Which one supports working with fido keys? Which one for e-mail encryption? (That’s law requierement around here for some types of jobs jUsT UsE sIgNaL won’t work and signal breaks every month because you didn’t update it frequently enough for no reason?)
Oh no. Can we please stop pushing (Open)PGP / GPG?
Why?
I’m guessing because it was more of a 70s hippy idea: free sharing of love, drugs and cryptographic keys
Because expertie-experts dislike it while not providing any alternative? No.
Here are some alternatives, depending on your use-case: https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/
No idea how I’m supposed to take this ranty blog needlessly interspersed with furry cartoons seriously. But it’s basically just restating (poorly) all the same criticisms and alternatives written about here: https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/
The ‘real’ criticisms of PGP are that it’s old, it’s clunky, and it doesn’t support forward secrecy by design. None of that is invalid, but I think the importance of those points depends on the use case and user.
The alternatives given are myriad and complexity and clunkiness are interspersed between dozens of solutions instead of well understood and documented in one tool.
That isn’t a superior approach. I’m not arguing that PGP is perfect, but it’s absolutely asinine to suggest (like this blog and others suggest) that the solution is to use dozens of other solutions with their own problems and with less auditing.
If we’re going to replace PGP, we need to do it properly in a centralized library/toolchain. Breaking up the solution and spreading it around just magnifies the problems.
Take it as a ranty blog interspaced with some furry art.
You can just ignore the furry art if it’s not your style because helpfully all of the important content is in the text.
Soatok links to the same Latacora blog on the first line and says that they’re only really going to reword what’s said there.
PGP/GPG maintainers have had many years to fix the problems that have been identified but they haven’t. Is it safe when used “properly”? Yes! It’s absolutely safe when used properly but the problem is it’s hard to use full stop.
I’m not saying modern solutions are perfect, because they’re not but the alternates that Latacora ( and Soatok ) suggest are better. Do you want to encrypt a file? Use age. Use minisign/signify for signing. They do do one thing and do it well. Signal is easy to use and sorts all of the key management for you. Most people don’t know what a private key is. They just know they want encrypted messaging because of the NSA or Snowden or whatever his name was on the news, they can’t remember and they don’t really care.
PGP has legitimate use cases but the vast majority of people don’t have those cases and should just use Signal. Signal and the Signal protocol is the centralised tool you’re looking for.
Can signify and minisign integrate with git for commit signing? Would anyone be able to verify it with a glance in web ui like it works right now ootb with gpg and every git forge? Which one supports working with fido keys? Which one for e-mail encryption? (That’s law requierement around here for some types of jobs jUsT UsE sIgNaL won’t work and signal breaks every month because you didn’t update it frequently enough for no reason?)
You still need a phone number for signal? I assume that’ll end eventually now that they’ve ended support for SMS but idk if it has yet.
I believe they have been testing usernames for some time now.
I see furries.
A furry recommending shit? Nah I’ll do the opposite.