Hello all, A friend and I have been going around about the security of PGP. I believe it to be unbreakable at this point in time. I also recall recently reading an article which stated that to break a PGP encrypted message, using today's technology, unlimited computer core availability, unlimited $$$, it would take the lifetime of 200 Suns. What is the security of PGP? How secure is it? Are there backdoors that you know of? Does the govt. possess any kind of keys capable of opening a PGP encrypted message? Thanks in advance for your time and attention. -Ric Below is a message I received today concerning what my friend believes about PGP. Does anyone know anything to substantiate this claim? *************************Message Separator******************************** Hi again ric, PGP stands for "Pretty Good Privacy" (you know that).. but it called "PRETTY GOOD" because it has several back doors for LEO and government agencies... I have a masters degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Software design... I think I know a little about computers also. While at WVU, we routinely broke PGP messages in Under 2 hours. The government can open them with their key as fast as you can open them with yours. Just a fact... since it aint bullet proof, Camoflage your messages. -War
The message from your friend is a purely fabricated troll; don't worry about it. At 06:41 PM 7/22/98 GMT, Ric V. Carvalho wrote:
A friend and I have been going around about the security of PGP. I believe it to be unbreakable at this point in time. I also recall recently reading an article which stated that to break a PGP encrypted message, using today's technology, unlimited computer core availability, unlimited $$$, it would take the lifetime of 200 Suns.
Is that 200 Sun Microsystems Computers, or 200 of those big yellow things? :-) Some previous versions of PGP had some weaknesses. PGP version 1 had the cool "Bass-O-Matic" algorithm, before Phil learned cryptography; read his discussion of Snake Oil in the manuals. I think some of the early versions had weaknesses in their random number generators used for session keys, but I may be mixing that up with Netscape, which definitely used to have that problem. One of the current concerns is that the popular version 2.6.2 et al use the MD5 hash, which is starting to show some theoretical weaknesses, though none of them are known to be exploitable against PGP, but the newer versions prefer to use SHA-1 as a hash just in case. There was also a serious problem which allowed an attacker to create a public/private key pair with the same keyID as a target (much shorter key, so quick to create, and who checks key length?), so the newer versions use a different method for creating keyIDs that's hard to spoof. Early versions also used shorter KeyIDs, so it was possible to get a collision by brute force, so the keyIDs were made longer. Impersonating a KeyID makes it possible to fake signatures, and also possible to trick PGP or the user into trusting the wrong key, which is always bad. The secret key ring file has two current weaknesses, which matter if somebody can access your file (so don't let that happen!) One is that if you have wimpy passphrases, a dictionary attack can crack the record containing your private key, at which point you lose - so don't use a wimpy passphrase, AND do protect your secret keyring well. Another, less serious is that the file contains the user name in plaintext - so if you're trying to hide your secret identity, someone reading the file will see that you not only have keys for Clark Kent, but also for Superman; in some environments, this can be more dangerous than cracking the passphrase, because the guys with rubber hoses can get your passphrase once they know they want it. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
participants (2)
-
Bill Stewart -
Ric V. Carvalho