> Ah... That question leads to an awkward discussion these days. There > was a IETF standards process that led to the OCB mode now supported by > GnuPG and others. GnuPG (and others) implemented it before the new > standard was officially released (there seemed to be consensus). That > standards process then dropped the GnuPG OCB mode and created 3 new > modes. So currently, there are the two modes that the OpenPGP standard > currently specifies and four proposed modes for a total of 6 modes, > each completely incompatible with any other mode. So there is a > potential for a interoperability disaster here.
> At this point I personally believe that everyone should step back from > this potential war and stop generating new modes by default. As a user > I can happily wait until an actual consensus is reached. Heck, I can > happily wait past that. There is no hurry here. Oh my. So the answer to my question "Should one really disable AEAD for recent GnuPG created PGP keys" (or OCB/AEAD or whatever) is maybe "yes" after all ... I mean, it's hard enough for most people to use public key encryption at all. Even if there are no interoperability issues. Maybe, one should agree on the lowest common denominator here. I encrypt passwords, sign software releases and sometimes (rarely), I encrypt an email. A text email. Which is like 4 KB or such. So, for me, I see no performance problem for my use-case. > The big usability problem now is that the implementations are not > making all this clear. GnuPG for instance doesn't even have an entry > in the FAQ about this problem. Most users will not be able to overcome > this sort of issue and will have to just give up. ... like most of them do anyway, when it comes to public key cryptography. > Anyway, I wrote a whole rant about this: > > * https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:schism > > I have added your Openkeychain references to my list of problems > caused by new OpenPGP cipher block modes. Thanks. > > * https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:noae_shame Thanks for this reference! Cheers, Tobias _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org https://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
