riseup.net OpenPGP Best Practices article

John Clizbe John at enigmail.net
Thu Jun 26 13:55:08 CEST 2014


Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> Even if they did intercept them, are the Americans any good at
>> interrogating a horse?
> 
> Yes.  We are world champions at beating dead horses.  To interrogate a
> horse, first simply shoot it in the head, and then we can leverage our
> dead-horse-beating skills in order to do enhanced equine interrogation.

Ah, yes... the fetish of equinonecroflagellation. It has an strikingly common
rate of incidence with maxicryptosizism[*], along with Internet posts labeling
the author[s]'s opinions vis-a-vis cryptography usage as "Best Practices".

I have found the best way to handle best practice cryptography posts is to
look for the writer[s]'s academic and/or professional qualifications and act
accordingly. Recommendations of RSA-4096 for general use allow me to bypass
that step. Security is a system, a chain. Fixating on a single, unlikely to be
attacked, link in that chain often ignores the other more easily attacked
links. Think of it as installing a bank vault door on a Bedouin tent.

-J

[*] Rob, I believe you can guess the argot I use for practitioners of this
dubious rite.


-- 
John P. Clizbe                      Inet: John (a) Gingerbear DAWT net
SKS/Enigmail/PGP-EKP                  or: John ( @ ) Enigmail DAWT net
FSF Assoc #995 / FSFE Fellow #1797  hkp://keyserver.gingerbear.net  or
     mailto:pgp-public-keys at gingerbear.net?subject=HELP

Q:"Just how do the residents of Haiku, Hawai'i hold conversations?"
A:"An odd melody / island voices on the winds / surplus of vowels"


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 457 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: </pipermail/attachments/20140626/6077060e/attachment.sig>


More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list