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posted by
martyb
on Sunday November 08 2015, @02:06PM
from the Wbuaal-qbrf-abg-rira-haqrefgnaq-EBG13 dept.
from the Wbuaal-qbrf-abg-rira-haqrefgnaq-EBG13 dept.
This paper presents the results of a laboratory study involving Mailvelope, a modern PGP client that integrates tightly with existing webmail providers. In our study, we brought in pairs of participants and had them attempt to use Mailvelope to communicate with each other. Our results shown that more than a decade and a half after "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt," modern PGP tools are still unusable for the masses. We finish with a discussion of pain points encountered using Mailvelope, and discuss what might be done to address them in future PGP systems.
The PDF of the study can be found here.
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Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client
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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 09 2015, @04:23AM
Bob's public key is sent to Alice. Bob is also prompted to select a passphrase which can be used to secure his private key on the web server so Bob can access his private key securely from multiple devices, you know how Bob loves his phone...
Alice now sends Bob the "secure" e-mail, which includes a link for clueless Bob to click on to load the decoder software from the web.
I'm skeptical whether the passphrase would be secure, though. Wouldn't it just be stored on the server? In which case the hosting company could presumably trivially decrypt his private key and then the whole game is over as soon as the gubmint requests the users' keys (and of course the companies never say no). Unless if the passphrase was hashed or something...but then if the server can't decrypt the passphrase, it can't use it to retrieve the private key anyway.
Bottom line, if they have your private key, you should assume that they'll give it up the first time somebody demands it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @10:46AM
That would be a crappy implementation.
The passphrase basically acts as a key to encrypt the actual private key.
What storing the private key on a server of course means is that for anyone having access to the data on the server, the strength of the key is effectively reduced to the strength of the passphrase.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 09 2015, @01:32PM
The passphrase is as secure as Bob makes it, but you know how Bob is a whiner about long passphrase requirements.
The passphrase is used to scramble Bob's private key before it goes to the server, and unscramble it when it rains back on him from the cloud. Bob's scrambled private key is known to an attacker, but such attacker would have to guess passphrases and try the resulting private keys on sample messages to determine if they have guessed correctly or not. If we can keep Bob secure from dictionary attacks and get his key length up around 12 characters from a 50+ alphabet size, 2x10^20 codes take a while to plough through.
Bottom line, like Apple these days, they won't have the private key.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @04:33PM
People are horrible at choosing passphrases.
They over-estimate the entropy they are using.
Search for "Brainwallet" for examples with money on the line.