Re: [DNG] default signing Re: [ann] heads 0.0 is out!
On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 11:15:00PM -0600, John Morris wrote: > > My notion is an email client should look for a keyring and if it can't > find one it should default to creating a basic key and publishing it to > one or more keyservers. Imagine if every message from $foobar mail > client always had a signature attached. Now imagine that it also > attached the public key on 1-1 emails. Just that would raise awareness > of signed and encrypted email, creating a demand for other clients to > chase the feature. > > Now harvest any keys it gets by that method or by looking up in the > keyservers. Then instead of just signing it can start signing and > encrypting by default once it has a key for the receiver. > That's an extremely bad default, IMHO. First reason? Imagine you forget to copy your keyring in a newly installed box, and you run your-preferred-smart-automagically-secure-email-client: you get yet-another-key-on-the-damn-keyring without any reason :) Second reason? You need all your peers to support encryption immediately, always, and out-of-the-box, otherwise john-the-newbie would disable this "feature" in no time. In general, no automagic can completely replace the complexity of human beings and their interactions. And when it comes to security and privacy, no automagic can cure the lack of awareness. My2Cents KatolaZ -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - GLUGCT -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ] ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] default signing Re: [ann] heads 0.0 is out!
On Fri, 2017-03-03 at 10:09 -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote: > What default cryptographic identity would it use? > > -- hendrik My notion is an email client should look for a keyring and if it can't find one it should default to creating a basic key and publishing it to one or more keyservers. Imagine if every message from $foobar mail client always had a signature attached. Now imagine that it also attached the public key on 1-1 emails. Just that would raise awareness of signed and encrypted email, creating a demand for other clients to chase the feature. Now harvest any keys it gets by that method or by looking up in the keyservers. Then instead of just signing it can start signing and encrypting by default once it has a key for the receiver. Once all clients had adopted the feature most personal email would be encrypted by default, combined with the current trend toward mail servers encrypting traffic between themselves you get a lot of virtually untrackable traffic that would give the NSA fits. No, normies with keys generated by default and no care put into protecting it would not be as secure as hard core types with their key material on external devices. But it would improve general security greatly at almost no expense. Here is the kicker. It is an obvious idea yet exactly zero mail clients have ever did it. Not the big commercial ones like Outlook, Lotus Notes or Eudora, not the big free ones like Thunderbird or Evolution. Not even Pine or GNU's Emacs Mail. Zero is a magic number, when you see zero or infinity you always take another look at your figures to see if you made a mistake. Well here is a suspicious zero. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] default signing Re: [ann] heads 0.0 is out!
On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 08:52:41AM -0600, ja...@beau.org wrote: > > And then there's what Jamie said: By all being private, we make the > > truly private stand out less. I haven't yet gotten to the point of > > using privacy I don't need personally, as is obvious by this unsigned > > email. > > > SteveT > > A friend of mine has a bit of a conspiracy theory going - asking why there > is no e-mail program that defaults to at *least* signing messages > cryptographically, if not using encryption as a default. He has a point: > none of the major distros set up their e-mail clients to default to > signing, or anything - why not? > > Sure, it's not the super-privacy-protective that heads or tails provides, > but signing at least provides some confirmation that things haven't been > changed along the way. What default cryptographic identity would it use? -- hendrik > ___ > Dng mailing list > Dng@lists.dyne.org > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
