Comment by cyphar
7 years ago
> I think all use cases boil down to 'encrypt and/or sign a file' for one of the stages. In the article, 'talking to people', 'sending files', 'encrypting backups' are all really just 'encrypt/sign a file' followed by transmission.
But they aren't the same thing. That's the whole point the article is making. Yes, if all you have is a tool that does "encrypt+sign a file", then all crypto problems will look like "encrypt+sign a file" problems.
For backups, tools like restic provide deduplication and snapshots as well as key rotation (and restic works flawlessly with dumb S3-like storage). You can't do that with PGP without reimplementing restic on top of it. Same with TarSnap. For talking to people, you want perfect forward secrecy and (usually) deniability. PGP actively works against you on both fronts. For sending files, there are also other considerations that Wormhole handles for you (though to be honest I haven't used it in anger).
While you can "solve" these problems with one tool, the best way of solving them is to have separate tools. That's the point the article is making.
For securely talking to people, often you may want non-repudiation, which is the exact opposite of deniability and anonymity.
There are very different, incompatible needs for slightly different usecases.
Signal -- and all other OTR-like protocols -- have deniability (or if you prefer it has repudiation rather than non-repudiation). Neither conversation participant can prove to a third party that the other party said something in a conversation. Moxie wrote a blog post about this in 2013[1].
The only circumstance in which you want non-repudiation is if you are really sure that you are okay with the recipient of your message later posting cryptographic proof that you said something in a chat with them. I bet most people (if you asked them) would effectively never want that "feature" for private chats.
[1]: https://signal.org/blog/simplifying-otr-deniability/
Sure, you usually don't want that feature in private setting, but you almost always want that feature in a commercial setting, and lots of communication happens in that context.
E.g. vendor-customer helpdesk chat, internal workplace communication including "less internal" things like different subsidiaries of international companies, etc, etc. Half of financial world runs on Thompson Reuters messenger which is essentially glorified chat. What if your boss sends you a message "hey, do that risky thing right now" - do you want that (likely informal) means of communication to have deniability? Does the company want deniability in the app in which random middle-managers message their subordinates? It makes sense for companies to mandate that teams choose only communications platforms that support authentication and nonrepudiation.
As soon as money, any kind of disputes, and the smallest chance for future legal proceedings are involved, anonymity and deniability are flaws and not features - as I said above, superficially similar use cases can have opposing and incompatible requirements.
Even going back to the commonly discussed use case of Signal for journalism. Let's say a journalist interviews a whistleblower over a mobile messaging app - you'd want anonymity and deniability there. And five minutes later that same journalist asks a clarifying question to the official head of that agency, likely also using a mobile messaging app, possibly the same one. Do you want the answer of that official to have deniability, or do you want that journalist to be able to cryptographically prove that the official lied?
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