Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-30 Thread Michel Messerschmidt
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:03:57PM -0400, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
 There may be a use case for contextualization in certificates, but if so
 I haven't found it yet.  :)

You may wnat to lookup up all certificates that signed a certificate. 
Or just get all your certificates displayed.
Or all certificates that have been signed with your keys.

But this is not to say that a tabular representation helps for these 
use cases :)



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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-30 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 05/30/2012 09:40 AM, Mark H. Wood wrote:
 Oh, how many times have I wondered why GPA has no search tool.

Taking a look at GPA, it seems that 0.9.0 no longer compiles on a modern
UNIX -- it expects libassuan-1.x, apparently, and libassuan's now in a
version 2.

I wasn't able to get the git checkout to work, either, due to a gettext
infrastructure mismatch.  The Makefile.in.in came from 0.17, but the
autoconf macros on my system are from 0.18.

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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-30 Thread Werner Koch
On Wed, 30 May 2012 16:16, r...@sixdemonbag.org said:
 On 05/30/2012 09:40 AM, Mark H. Wood wrote:
 Oh, how many times have I wondered why GPA has no search tool.

 Taking a look at GPA, it seems that 0.9.0 no longer compiles on a modern
 UNIX -- it expects libassuan-1.x, apparently, and libassuan's now in a
 version 2.

There is a new release:

  Noteworthy changes in version 0.9.2 (2012-05-02)
  
   * Adjust server mode to modern Libassuan.
  
   * Add options --enable-logging for W32.
  
   * Add options --gpg-binary, --gpgsm-binary and --debug-edit-fsm.
  
   * Properly process CMS data in the clipboard and with the server's
 VERIFY_FILES and DECRYPT_FILES commands.
  
   * Minor code cleanups.
  
  
  Noteworthy changes in version 0.9.1 (2012-04-18)
  
  
   * The key selection dialogs for encryption and signing do not anymore
 list expired, revoked or otherwise invalid keys.
  
   * If no recipients are given to the server, a generic key selection
 dialog is now used.
  
   * Now works with Libassuan 2.x.
  
   * The card manager now displays the ATR for an unknown card.
  


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner
  
-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.


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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread Hauke Laging
Am Di 29.05.2012, 11:51:06 schrieb Daniel Kahn Gillmor:

 I think switching the default to long would be on balance a Good Thing.

A smaller change which should solve most of these problems could be to 
change the error message. If gpg is operating with the short format then a 
respective hint could be added:

gpg is currently operation with short ID format. This prevents short ID 
collisions from being easily detected. You may want to run gpg with the option 
'--keyid-format long' to check the long IDs.


Hauke
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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread Kristian Fiskerstrand
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 2012-05-29 17:51, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
 On 05/29/2012 11:35 AM, Werner Koch wrote:

...

 I think switching the default to long would be on balance a Good
 Thing.
 

I agree, and don't see much of a reason not to use a long KeyID rather
than a short one.

However, please note that search for subkeys using the long keyID
format is only supported in SKS since version 1.1.3 announced 11 April
2012 (lookup for parent/regular public keys is supported before that),
so before implementing such a change I'd like to consider setting the
minimum requirement for the SKS pool[0] to 1.1.3.

Technically that is a rather easy change, however, it'd currently
reduce the number of available servers to about 15 from 61 in the pool
with min version requrement of 1.1.0 (current). So might have to give
the keyserver administrators some time to upgrade before that.

(cross posting to sks-devel)

[0] http://sks-keyservers.net/status/

- -- 
- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
http://www.sumptuouscapital.com
Twitter: @krifisk
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The book: Sending Emails - The Safe Way: An
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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 5/29/12 11:51 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
 Perhaps GnuPG should change the default of --keyid-format from short
 to long?

Hurts interoperability.  Once someone learns the process on PGP or
BouncyCastle or [insert OpenPGP implementation here], they're going to
want to take those same skills over to GnuPG.  Those other
implementations overwhelmingly display short key IDs; if they come to
GnuPG expecting short key IDs and see long ones, we'll see a sea of
questions of why did my key ID change when I imported it from PGP to
GnuPG?

(Hmm.  Interoperability might be the wrong word, but there's not a
good term for skill portability.)

Anyway, it's not that I think this change is _a priori_ bad, but in
order to diminish the skill portability issues (both in moving from
other implementations to GnuPG and from GnuPG to other implementations)
I think this change should not be implemented without some coordination
with the other major implementations.

Honestly, this seems like something to bring up to the IETF WG.  The RFC
already has a plethora of implementation recommendations: adding an
implementation recommendation of use long key IDs when possible seems
to be an entirely reasonable addition.

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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread Werner Koch
On Tue, 29 May 2012 18:31, r...@sixdemonbag.org said:

 Honestly, this seems like something to bring up to the IETF WG.  The RFC
 already has a plethora of implementation recommendations: adding an
 implementation recommendation of use long key IDs when possible seems

I bet that this will immediately start a discussion on a v5 key format
to fix this problem for “all” time.  And obviously the suggestion will
then be to show the full, then, SHA-256 fingerprint.

Frontends should handle this problem. For example they could show all
matching keys after a decryption problem.  Hiding the keyID from the
user would even be better - the mail address should be sufficient for
99% of all users.  For the experts, a “Details” button can show all the
glory details of the key.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread Doug Barton
On 5/29/2012 10:18 AM, Werner Koch wrote:
 Hiding the keyID from the user would even be better - the mail
 address should be sufficient for 99% of all users.

I use the e-mail address for almost all of my command-line work, FWIW.


-- 
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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 5/29/12 1:18 PM, Werner Koch wrote:
 Frontends should handle this problem.

The problem is that most people developing front ends are making them
pretty darn user-hostile.

A few years ago while taking some HCI courses, I did a usability study
on the most common certificate interface -- the tabular widget.  It
turned out to be just beyond-Godawful.

rant follows

Tabular data is the Right Thing To Do in two major use cases.

The first is when you have a noninteractive display of identical
field(s) for multiple pieces of data.  Consider a printed almanac: if it
wants to convey a list of countries and populations, the best way to do
it is with a table.  Different records (countries), identical fields
(population), and since the paper is noninteractive, the table is a win.

Now consider if instead of an almanac you have Wolfram Alpha.  Typing
population of Switzerland immediately yields *just* the data you want,
and you don't get confused by your eye accidentally jumping a row and
reading the population of Sweden instead.  A table widget is more prone
to misreadings.

The second Big Win for tables is when data must be contextualized by
other data.  Consider a spreadsheet showing profits and losses for
different divisions of a business: if all you know is that a given
division made $X, you don't know if that's your most profitable
division, your least profitable division, or what-have-you.  The other
data is necessary to put the data you're interested in into a larger
context.

Now consider the tabular widget as used in PGPkeys, GPA, the Enigmail
key manager, etcetera.  The certificates don't need to be
contextualized: all the data necessary to evaluate a certificate is
present in the same record as the certificate.  And since it's a
graphical application the interface can be interactive, which means the
other major use-case isn't applicable here.

Enigmail tries to have its cake and eat it too by prominently featuring
a large search box at the top of the window.  But this isn't a very good
solution.  In terms of screen real estate, about five-sixths of the
screen is taken up by the tabular widget.  The search box takes up a
relatively small portion.  The human eye tends to view large things as
more important than small things -- so the center of attention is
naturally drawn to the tabular widget, not the search box.  Further, the
human eye tends to view complex things as more important than simple
things -- so the eye is drawn to the tabular widget again, not the
search box.  I'm grateful Enigmail has a search box in the certificate
manager, but I doubt if new users even notice it.

According to Google's HCI guys [2], 90% of the U.S. internet-using
population doesn't know how to use Control-F to find a word in a
document or a page.  That's the level of skill most people have with
user interfaces -- awful.  And if you count up the number of widgets on
the screen in your average certificate manager, you'll find that there's
more visual complexity there than in Microsoft Word.

/rant over

Anyway.  If people are interested in what I found out about effective
user-interface design with respect to certificate managers, say the
word.  Otherwise I'll crawl back under my rock and leave the subject
alone for another couple of years.  :)

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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread David Shaw
On May 29, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:

 On 05/29/2012 11:35 AM, Werner Koch wrote:
 Use 
 
   gpg --keyid-format long --decrypt sensitive_file.gpg
 
 to see the non-abbreviated key ID as stored in the file.  Use this to
 find the key on a server, etc.
 
 i've seen a lot of these mistakes where people seem to think that 32-bit
 keyids are somehow collision-resistant.  For example:
 
 https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/uds-announce/2012-May/000234.html
 
 Perhaps GnuPG should change the default of --keyid-format from short
 to long?  certainly, the 64-bit keyID itself is not as
 collision-resistant as the full fingerprint, but it does raise the bar
 for an attacker (and discourages users from just parrotting the 32-bit
 keyid if they don't understand what they're looking at).
 
 I think switching the default to long would be on balance a Good Thing.
 
 What do other people think?

I think that it would bring more confusion than benefit, unfortunately.  There 
is a significant amount of documentation (and even code) that uses OpenPGP in 
terms of 32-bit key IDs, and if that if we were to change, we'd cause all sorts 
of problems.  Defaults should be conservative.

That doesn't mean we can't start encouraging people to use 64-bit IDs, but I 
don't expect it to be a quick process.

What is your concern here, though - accidental or intentional collision?

David


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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread David Shaw
On May 29, 2012, at 1:18 PM, Werner Koch wrote:

 On Tue, 29 May 2012 18:31, r...@sixdemonbag.org said:
 
 Honestly, this seems like something to bring up to the IETF WG.  The RFC
 already has a plethora of implementation recommendations: adding an
 implementation recommendation of use long key IDs when possible seems
 
 I bet that this will immediately start a discussion on a v5 key format
 to fix this problem for “all” time.  And obviously the suggestion will
 then be to show the full, then, SHA-256 fingerprint.

No doubt.  V5 is a rather nice way to handle the problem: if a new key format 
came about, it's reasonable that the handle used to refer to it is different. 
 Just like when things went from v3 to v4 and the fingerprint format changed, 
people understood that these were two different key types and accepted that 
they would appear different in a UI.

I daresay that designing a V5 key format might even be accomplished sooner than 
rooting out all the (now-incorrect) FAQs and general knowledge of people using 
OpenPGP to get them to use 64-bit key IDs instead of 32. ;)

David


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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread Sam Whited
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:47 PM, David Shaw ds...@jabberwocky.com wrote:
 On May 29, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:

 What is your concern here, though - accidental or intentional collision?

Certainly both; while accidental collision isn't probable, 32-bit IDs
aren't exactly collision resistant either. This, coupled with the fact
that a nice GPGPU is now relatively inexpensive makes brute forcing
collisions not only possible, but relatively easy for a determined
attacker.

—Sam


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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread David Shaw
On May 29, 2012, at 2:05 PM, Sam Whited wrote:

 On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:47 PM, David Shaw ds...@jabberwocky.com wrote:
 On May 29, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
 
 What is your concern here, though - accidental or intentional collision?
 
 Certainly both; while accidental collision isn't probable, 32-bit IDs
 aren't exactly collision resistant either. This, coupled with the fact
 that a nice GPGPU is now relatively inexpensive makes brute forcing
 collisions not only possible, but relatively easy for a determined
 attacker.

The reason I bring it up is that using the v3 key attack, 64-bit key IDs have 
no particular benefit over 32-bit IDs for intentional collisions (i.e. an 
attacker generating a key with the same key ID as the victim in order to 
confuse matters and/or steal traffic).  It's just as easy to forge 64 bits as 
it is to forge 32…

David


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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread Werner Koch
On Tue, 29 May 2012 19:44, r...@sixdemonbag.org said:

 Anyway.  If people are interested in what I found out about effective
 user-interface design with respect to certificate managers, say the
 word.  Otherwise I'll crawl back under my rock and leave the subject

GPA has many different ways to show keys.  IMHO the selection box which
pops up in GPA, if run as a UI-server, can't figure out the key to use.
I have always thought that this is better than the the standard GPA
frontpage, which shows all keys; despite that the most common operation
then is trying to locate the right key.  A search box would make much
more sense here.  However, changing such a common UI might result in a
lot of negative comments - people love what they once learned.

Yes, I am interested in your findings.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner


-- 
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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread Daniel Kahn Gillmor
On 05/29/2012 02:18 PM, David Shaw wrote:
 The reason I bring it up is that using the v3 key attack, 64-bit key IDs have 
 no particular benefit over 32-bit IDs for intentional collisions (i.e. an 
 attacker generating a key with the same key ID as the victim in order to 
 confuse matters and/or steal traffic).  It's just as easy to forge 64 bits as 
 it is to forge 32…

Right, which is why gpg should default to not processing/accepting v3
keys either, frankly.  The window for v3 being deprecated started long
ago.  If we expect people to rely on gpg for any sort of key management,
it ought to have reasonably safe and sane defaults.

dropping v3 unless explicitly overridden, and defaulting to displaying
64-bit keyids in the places where it must show keyids seems like it
would be a reasonable choice.

Yes, it might break compatibility with some existing docs.  Those docs
are likely to be out-of-date, and many of them may well encourage bad
practices anyway to someone who doesn't understand what they're seeing.

fwiw, i agree with Werner that we should avoid displaying keyids to
users wherever we can -- they're not human-friendly identifiers.  But if
we're going to expose them, we should be exposing them in ways that at
least make them somewhat collision-resistant.

--dkg



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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 5/29/12 3:23 PM, Werner Koch wrote:
 However, changing such a common UI might result in a
 lot of negative comments - people love what they once learned.

Absolutely.  The good news, though, is that (at least in the Free
Software world) the 'market' is fragmented.  No one particular key
manager holds a dominant position.  Off the top of my head there's
Seahorse, Kgpg, GPA, the Enigmail key manager, and more.  It's possible
for a new entry to exist without offending the users who are already
happy with the existing/dominant certificate management UI.  They just
won't use the new thing, that's all -- but new users may decide to use
the better-designed interface.

 Yes, I am interested in your findings.

The code we put together was a fairly straightforward UI mockup.  One
version was in Java (in a vain, misguided attempt at cross-platform
support); after that I put together one in Python that directly targeted
GNOME 2.  It would need some work to overhaul it for GNOME 3 (and
possibly a lot of work, given PyGTK has been deprecated in favor of a
different kind of binding).  That said, if you'll forgive me not having
a mockup ready --


1.  The window was almost comically blank:

._.
| Search for: |   |
+-+
| (room for a line of text, begins blank) |
+-+
| (checkbox for 'Show all matches')   |
+-+
| |
| |
|  (completely blank  |
|  tabular widget)|
| |
+-+

In usability tests, people who already had experience with conventional
key managers absolutely hated this arrangement.  They wanted to see all
the information at once.  People who were new to OpenPGP were a little
confused: they weren't accustomed to windows that were mostly blank, but
they had no difficulty understanding that they needed to interact with
the search box first.  An early version of this allowed users to view
all 1000+ certificates on the keyring by clicking the 'Show all matches'
checkbox immediately.  This turned out to be a negative experience for
some users, who immediately felt overwhelmed by data.  For this reason,
the checkbox was originally set as insensitive: only once data was
entered in the search box and the number of matches ranged between 1 and
50 did the checkbox become active.


2.  As users typed things into the searchbox, the line of text would
update.  For instance, if the user typed 'T' the text would say
something like, 55 certificates contain 'T'.  At this point the user
could click on the checkbox if he/she wished.  People seemed to
understand that they should keep typing, though.  Once enough letters
were entered to reduce the matches to under seven certs, the checkbox
selected itself and the matching UIDs populated in the widget.  And, of
course, as soon as the matches went 50 the user could manually select
the checkbox.

3.  Typing 'RSA', 'DSA' and/or 'ELG' would further restrict keys.
Nobody cared about this feature: it was completely unused.  Likewise
with = and/or = to restrict by key length.  Nobody cared.
 In hindsight, this was a horrible misfeature -- what if someone's name
contained 'rsa', 'dsa' or 'elg'?  For instance, one of my classmates'
email addresses was @thetiredsaint.com; had we used his certificate as
one of our tests, I suspect people would have been driven up the wall by
this misfeature (note the dsa in thetiredsaint).

4.  Searching by a hex string was supported, so long as it was prefixed
with 0x.

5.  Multiple search terms were treated as logical-ANDs, not logical-ORs.
 People didn't want/use ORs: nobody wanted UIDs matching 'John' or
'Smith', they wanted UIDs matching 'John' and 'Smith' -- e.g., Bob
Smith would match the first but not the second.

6.  Once the tabular widget was displaying UIDs, clicking on a row in
the UID would populate its key ID field.  This further reduced the
cognitive load on people: rather than see 10 UIDs and 10 key IDs (a
widget count of 20 spread across two columns), there was a single column
of 10 UIDs and, *if a row was selected*, a single key ID shown -- a
widget count of 11.  Some people liked this, some people absolutely
hated it.  The ones who hated it tended to be the more experienced
computer users.

7.  Upon clicking a UID, not only would the key ID field populate, but
the line of text would instruct the user Double-click to view or edit
this certificate.  Upon double-clicking, congratulations, the mock-up
ended -- the mock-up was only meant to test the ease of finding and
selecting the desired certificate.



Our testing was pretty rough.  We had seven test subjects (a very small
sample), one of whom was very 

Re: changing the default for --keyid-format [was: Re: getting an encrypted file to show what public key was used]

2012-05-29 Thread David Shaw
On May 29, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:

 On 05/29/2012 02:18 PM, David Shaw wrote:
 The reason I bring it up is that using the v3 key attack, 64-bit key IDs 
 have no particular benefit over 32-bit IDs for intentional collisions (i.e. 
 an attacker generating a key with the same key ID as the victim in order to 
 confuse matters and/or steal traffic).  It's just as easy to forge 64 bits 
 as it is to forge 32…
 
 Right, which is why gpg should default to not processing/accepting v3
 keys either, frankly.  The window for v3 being deprecated started long
 ago.  If we expect people to rely on gpg for any sort of key management,
 it ought to have reasonably safe and sane defaults.

While I don't think the world is ready for a change in default visibility from 
32 to 64 bit key IDs, I am in favor of this by default.

David


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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread reynt0

On Tue, 29 May 2012, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
 . . .

Tabular data is the Right Thing To Do in two major use cases.

The first is when you have a noninteractive display of identical
field(s) for multiple pieces of data.  Consider a printed almanac: if it
wants to convey a list of countries and populations, the best way to do
it is with a table.  Different records (countries), identical fields
(population), and since the paper is noninteractive, the table is a win.

 . . .

The second Big Win for tables is when data must be contextualized by
other data.  Consider a spreadsheet showing profits and losses for
different divisions of a business: if all you know is that a given
division made $X, you don't know if that's your most profitable
division, your least profitable division, or what-have-you.  The other
data is necessary to put the data you're interested in into a larger
context.

 . . .

In general, being able to examine variation of content within
uniformity of structure is also a way to legitimate the
specific content of interest.  If someone feeds you just one
answer Special, just for you!, you may feel happy and relaxed,
but you missed the chance to see if the result you got makes
sense compared to other results.  The question of legitimation
is actually a broad and significant issue.

Referring to RJH's later long description of his work, might
this kind of consideration be one possible factor in experts' 
liking tabular display more than newbies did?  Context would

mean more to people who know how to evaluate it.  Eg seeing
tabular output, they are always a little verifying the
current correctness of how the server is working, and so on.

If I understand RJH's description corectly, it seemed to me
that the interface he described was presenting a combination
of context and focus, including some user control over extent
of context (possibly not effectively clued control, but that
is not unusual for a pilot version of anything).

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Re: changing the default for --keyid-format

2012-05-29 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 5/29/12 9:57 PM, reynt0 wrote:
 In general, being able to examine variation of content within
 uniformity of structure is also a way to legitimate the
 specific content of interest.

As I said, it's useful when data must be contextualized.  For a
spreadsheet, the information in one row must be put in the context of
information in other rows.  This isn't the case for a certificate
manager, though: each certificate is its own self-contained entity.
Whether I have 500 RSA keys or 1 RSA key doesn't matter to me in the
slightest: I just want to look at this *one particular* RSA key, etc.

There may be a use case for contextualization in certificates, but if so
I haven't found it yet.  :)


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