2022-05-26 11:40:50 +00:00
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---
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title: Why is it better to sign commits with SSH than OpenPGP?
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author: "Florian Maury"
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slug: ssh-vs-openpgp-signing
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date: 2022-05-26T11:00:00Z
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2022-05-28 09:55:19 +00:00
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tags:
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- cryptography
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- git
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2022-05-26 11:40:50 +00:00
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---
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The OpenPGP format was designed in the 90's and never really changed since
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then. It was documented in
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[RFC4880](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4880) in 2008.
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Unfortunately, in the 90's, people had really no good understanding of crypto
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yet, and the choices made were poor. Envelope design is poor. Some crypto
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algorithms are clearly outdated. Some default options are plain wrong.
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Have you ever noticed that so many crypto attacks target OpenPGP and GnuPG?
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That's not a surprise: it's a popular crypto solution and it's a relatively
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easy target, comparatively to some other mainstream crypto implementations. The
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Go langage maintainers even deprecated the OpenPGP implementation in their
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crypto standard library because they think [OpenPGP is
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*dangerous*](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44226).
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> OpenPGP is incompatible with [Go Cryptography
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> Principles](https://golang.org/design/cryptography-principles),
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it's complex, fragile, and unsafe, and using it exposes applications to a
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dangerous ecosystem.
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Basically, I would say that the only thing that OpenPGP has for itself is the
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deployed infrastructure. Or has it? Web of trust is mostly dead, since
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keyservers are out-of-service. And OpenPGP adoption was never really that high
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to begin with.
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SSH keys are much more widely deployed and used than OpenPGP keys. The format
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is dead simple, and the crypto implementation from OpenSSH is up-to-date.
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I am very happy that git made SSH signing possible; it means I can delete my
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OpenPGP keys for good. I just hope linux distros will make the switch soon, to
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a more modern crypto approach: ssh signing or minisign.
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