PGP Link.

wyndowlicker · Member of the Month

Hey now,

This is a very important thing for people to start using.It may take some time but it cane be very helpful.

http://www.pgpi.org/

weedar · Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:57 pm

Actually, the admins here might want to consider adding a new field to the
user profiles for everyone's public PGP key, eh? Smile

brixtonj · Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:09 am

MargaretThatcher · Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:26 am

Authorities can arbitrarily intercept a person's email. The technology to do this is certainly in place in the UK and likely in the US. This is just the local snoops (MI5, police etc.), the internation security services have been doing this for years with Echelon. They also have the facility to sniff traffic for keywords and patterns. PGP prevents snooping and also provides a means of authenticating the sender. PGP is a vital tool. Everyone should use it and also understand the pitfalls.

There is something strange about your post brixtonj.

brixtonj · Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:10 am

Spacemonkey · Wed Mar 30, 2005 8:32 am

brixtonj · Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:39 pm

Hi !!!

<Not Speaking English at 100% as Its not my mother language at all.Indeed not in UK (just the nick I used to have from long t ago) , Indeed I am based much much more South Wink

and indeed not working in "Internet Security" , but some kind of consumers-good algorithmic security that you breach much more often Wink

... but that's not the point>

-Still make it to Brixton from time to time.though

back to email encryption.

If you understand how internet works... , gennerally speaking , ITs nearly impossible trap / screen all TCP packets , and screening them to search for something suspcicious. It may be done at one end (a company's mail server) or at a obvious link (such as UK->US T3 link). But -in general- when you send a mail .. that mail is decompossed of 512 bytes chunks .. and these chunks travel (with not particular order ) by any of the several possible routes , forwarded and forwarded by servers to be just recomposed at the en POP server.

Just for fun .. there are some mail tracking utilities in which you see the path of your particular email over a world-map .. and its awesome. Its following a different route every time. And It uses -sometimes- goverment servers ,! ,or university servers , or company servers , etc.. and ALL of these (and the thousands more out there) should be cooperating with LEAs to consistently being able to screen emails.

To really trap /screen every mail .. echelon , or -you name it- should log every possible traffic server in the world , and I am sure It doesnt.

OK , PGP use in our Hobbies is of great utility. I do .. You probbably do and most people do PGP whenever they send/talk about something hot. Its probbably overkills ,but Its better safe than sorry.

BUT publising here the set of public PGP keys for everyone perhaps would mislead people (as it often do ) to trust someone just'cos they know their PGPkey !. If you send a wrong-doingg mail l to the wrong person (and THAT's the security problem I see) , It doesnt matter if it is 2048 bit PGP encrypted or not .. tha then .. you are fuckd.

In other words ... sending mails (related to our hobbies ) to unknowns (and that's the use of publishing our PGP keys) is much much more dangerous than sending then unencrypted .

Anyway ..-I didnt really thought about the digital signature .. that would be a really usefull tool over here-. Really.

A real pleasure to talk to you .
Hava good day.

Spacemonkey · Thu Mar 31, 2005 5:39 am

Brixtonj, apologies if I came off hostile, you do seem to know what you're talking about.
Your last post clarifies quite a bit that I apparently misunderstood.

Though I still say you underestimate the capabillites of those who would wish to monitor the internet, it was born of a US DOD project after all...

Cheers

MargaretThatcher · Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:20 am

Echelon is certainly considered capable of sniffing most internet data. It may not get it all, but it gets most. Echelon is an Anglo Saxon thing. It is also controlled by the international snoops, not internal. Hence, in UK and likely other countries, the ISP black boxes for internal snoopers.

It is certainly possible to snoop a particular IP address. It is also possible to sniff all data and look for suspicious data. Both are done.

Remember the Cold War? Well since then, security budgets have increased hugely. Back then, they could do anything they want, and they still can. You won't get your door kicked in for coming here, but you might end up on a list. Who knows what will happen in the future. Don't get on a list: be sensible and use a good proxy. TOR.

Polverone · Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:12 am

Even better would be to make "the list" (if we suppose that lists are made at all) for this site unmanageably long. There should be some extremely popular forums to draw traffic to mask the interest in the chemistry forums. I suggest this site add forums dedicated to automobiles, the club scene, popular videogames, and personal ads Razz

. Force all traffic over https. You may have to upgrade hosting packages several times to handle all the visitors, though.

I applaud the widespread use of encryption, no matter what the situation, as it makes opportunistic signal intelligence much harder. The US has been suspected of using signal intelligence to aid domestic companies against foreign competitors in high-value commercial deals. It's not just the paranoid and the law-skirting individuals who should try to work encryption into their communications channels. Unfortunately, it can be very hard to use encryption or persuade others to use it since most people currently do not. It's a long, slow slog toward ubiquitous encryption, and applications like PGP don't (or didn't) make it easy for new users to get started, what with their confusing talk of webs of trust, digital signatures, public and symmetric keys, and all the other stuff someone doesn't want to learn about just to send email. For preventing opportunistic signal intelligence, if for no other reason, it would be good to have an email client with dead-simple "dummy" options that will encrypt and verify signatures of mail between two parties with their keys, so that users can start reaping some benefits of encryption without first understanding the whole ball of wax.

brixtonj · Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:34 pm