Re: On email and web security

"John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Thu, 31 December 2015 19:37 UTC

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Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 19:37:21 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: On email and web security
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>Second, many of my colleagues have asked me to remove their old keys from my database, because they
>have forgotten them, although the PGP repository has not.

FWIW, the public repository at pgp.com reverifies the keys from time
to time.  Earlier this week I got a couple of messages saying that if
I still wanted them to publish keys corresponding to those addresses,
click through and reconfirm.  (Yes, I realize how weak this is, but
in the circumstances it's better than nothing.)

Your overall point that the problem with crypto is that it's unusable
if you're not a hard core geek is of course correct.

>Third, I note that when I receive a signed email that has gone through an IETF alias, I can no longer
>verify the signature as a result of content modification. What is the value of a signature one cannot
>verify?

With the advent of DMARC, this problem now affects a lot more people
than ones who are looking for PGP signatures.

R's,
John