Ask Slashdot: How Do I Request Someone To Send Me a Public Key? 399
First time accepted submitter extraqwert writes "An organization wants me to send them my personal data by email. I certainly do trust them. However, I would like to politely ask them to send me their public key for encryption. The secretary probably does not know what it is. But they do have a pretty good IT department, so they can figure out. My question is, what is the proper wording for such a request? What is the right terminology to use? Should I say ``please send me your RSA key''? ``Public key''? ``PGP key''? Is there a standard and reasonable wording for such a request? (On my end, I am using GNU PGP: http://www.gnupg.org/ ) Any suggestions on how to be polite in this case?"
This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple and expected processes like this need to be made truly dead simple and nearly automatic. Instead, there are a ton of different formats for keys depending on which the usage and you need to understand a significant amount about what's going on under the covers to do even these kinds of simple actions.
Incidentally, here's [gnupg.org] the answer to the question. It's anything but clear, but likely to be clearer than any answer you get here.
Re:This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Informative)
And heaven help you if you're using a web-based Email system, which basically breaks all these options. You know, like nearly all "normal" people are now doing.
Extensions needed! (Score:5, Insightful)
We need some developers to setup-in and develop in-browser Firefox/Chrome extensions (or userscript, or whatever) that seamlessly integrate encryption into popular webmails.
You see plain text on the screen, but what actually goes into the "textarea" of the form is encrypted.
There are already javascript "Rich Text Editors" which do similar jobs (you see a nicely formated text on the screen, but its HTML/BBCode/WikiCode going into the textarea). We simply need something similar, but for encryption and packed into the browser itself through extension mechanisms.
(Note: Proper security comes from *end to end* encryption. It's therefor mandatory that the encryption/decryption layer is something that the end users install on their browser, and not something provided by the webmail site, even if it's client-side script code. Though it would help if webmail sites provided a few hooks or micro format to simplify the plugin of the encryption layer).
Bonus point if someone else manage to do the same with OTR and webchats.
Re:Extensions needed! (Score:4, Interesting)
Or perhaps we ought to just take email back to the drawing board. Something I've pondered is an "email 2" where encryption is required. In addition, to kill email spam, any server that sends out email could be required to have a DNS record identifying it as an established SMTP server, and all POP3/IMAP servers only trust them instead of just accepting emails from any IP address that probably belongs to grandma's compromised PC. Of course, reverse arpa addresses are considered invalid.
Webmail providers could do something akin to mega.co.nz style vault access, and only the user's password could decrypt the messages they receive. Something to the effect of having the user store the RSA keys on a key fob (or otherwise just keeping them local) and when they log in they decrypt the messages, and then re-encrypt using their vault key and store them on the server.
Email 2 addresses could be identified by adding say a greater than sign after the @, indicating to the software stack that only secure transmission is permitted, say email2user@>domain.com
That should also take care of your NSA problem, though companies like google would never be on board since they can't keyword match ads to messages.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And, just for clarity, a POP3 "server" doesn't accept mail. POP3
Re: (Score:3)
Fucking Google ignores SPF records. Just the other day at work we were checking on the viability of spoofing from our cloud based servers into our Google hosted-domain email (to make it easier for an internal automated system to assign issues to the correct customer). So I spoofed the "From:" header. No problem. Yay, it'll work! :-)
Then, curious, I spoofed the envelope sender for my personal domain which specifies a hard-fail. Google nicely logged the hard-fail and delivered the email anyway. It's nice
Re: (Score:2)
... any server that sends out email could be required to have a DNS record identifying it as an established SMTP server, and all POP3/IMAP servers only trust them instead of just accepting emails from any IP address that probably belongs to grandma's compromised PC.
So, I couldn't run my own private server unless I registered it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The problem I see is that you can send all the encrypted emails you want, but the recipients have to decrypt them. So they need your public key. Everyone needs your public key, and everyone will have your public key. Don't you think the NSA has already started compiling public keys as well?
What you need to do is have a system that has others' public keys stored, and applies the proper one for whatever email address a message is meant for. Then your message is as safe as the recipient's private key is. Note,
Re: (Score:2)
No, they don't need the sender's public key to decrypt. The sender encrypts using the recipient's public key which is tied to the recipient's *private* key. That private key is used for decryption. And nobody should have the recipient's private key but the recipient themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Not in this scenario(privacy), but it does depend on usage - If I send you an email encrypted with my private key then anyone can read it, but can also be (reasonably) sure the email did in fact come from me and hasn't been tampered with.
Then there's double-encryption - I encrypt with my private key and then again with your public key - now you're the only one who can decrypt the message, *and* you can confirm that it actually came from me.
Re: (Score:2)
If I send you an email encrypted with my private key then anyone can read it, but can also be (reasonably) sure the email did in fact come from me and hasn't been tampered with.
I'm familiar with that as signing, not encrypting.
Re:Extensions needed! (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a reason you would use your private key to send encrypted emails to someone? I don't understand.
My understanding is this:
A uses B's public key to send message to B, B decrypts with B's private key.
A slot safe is a better analogy than keys -- anyone can put stuff in the safe's slot, but only the owner who knows the combination can open it and read the messages people put in there.
But -- maybe you're describing a use scenario I'm not familiar with. And if that is the case, I'd like to understand it.
Re:Extensions needed! (Score:5, Informative)
The common term is signing, I should have mentioned that. If you encrypt with your private key it does nothing to hide the message since anyone can decrypt with your public key, but it does let everyone verify that the message did in fact come from you and hasn't been tampered with - the signature is exactly as secure as the encrypted communication channel because it is the exact same mechanism.
As an example, let's say the president wanted to send nuclear missile firing orders by email. Now maybe he'd want to keep the orders secret, and he'd encrypt with the missile silo's public key for that. But far more important would be a mechanism in place to verify that the orders actually came from him and not some script kiddie spoofing his email account. That's where the signing comes in - he *also* encrypts his email with his own private key, and the silo can now confirm that the message came from the right person.
It's sort of the next step beyond the "secret codeword" confirmation - with a codeword everybody who needs to be able to confirm their orders has to know what the codeword is, and that's a large attack surface for those looking to compromise the system. With digital signing only the president needs to know the codeword, and never tells it to anyone else. Everybody else just needs his public key to confirm that he does in fact know the codeword - thus the system is much more difficult to compromise. That such functionality comes essentially for free with any public/private key encryption channel is an added bonus.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Informative)
You mean a standard e-mail client like for example Thunderbird that has existed for more than a decade and could check all your 8 accounts easily and with more functionality than you could ever imagine on a mobile device and has zero advertisements?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Encrypted attachment. The mail body only contains the hint that the real data are in the attachment.
Of course, that won't help you if the recipient is not familiar with using encryption at all...
Use the post office (Score:4, Funny)
Type the reply on a Royal typewriter and take it to your local post office. Use Certified or Registered mail if you feel squeamish about sending personal information. The NSA can't open a properly mailed letter.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as information - in Estonia we have national id cards which have PKCS11 for digital signing and encryption. Everyone already has a key that can be used to encrypt and/or sign data. For instance, the state sends speedcam fines to you via email that are encrypted to your public key and digitally signed by a police officer. Any person can encrypt data to any other person's public key provided that the recipient has an id card with valid certificates. The only caveat is that when the id card expires, the data is unencryptable because new certificates are generated in the new card and then signed by CA.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Would this mean that the gov't office that gave you the national ID card is also responsible for generating & storing your private key? If this is the case, it means the gov't has everyone's keys, and the encryption becomes meaningless. :/
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Interesting)
Well not in the case given, where you are using the key in order to communicate with the government (eg speeding tickets).
Banks should really do this, supply their customers with keys (store them on the cards that banks already give to customers) and then all electronic communication to/from the bank is verified using these keys. Should cut down on most of the phishing scams targeting banks.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Informative)
In Estonia these id cards are used for everything. You can log into banks, you can communicate with any state official. You can sign any contract digitally with them. You can encrypt documents to another person's public key. Etc. This is much simpler than banks and everyone giving out their own cards - i only need one.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Interesting)
Simpler, yes. Desirable, no. It easily means that everything you do in any context is now easily linked. A state-mandated and -enforced real name policy. This is problematic for the same reasons that facebook or google forcing this on everyone is problematic. There are serious privacy problems with this.
For example, simply knowing what key a message is encrypted to --and this is generally listed on the outside of a message and thus public-- means that you can do traffic analysis. And so you know which parties are talking to which other parties. Someone getting a lot of messages from the taxman or the state-run fine collector means what, do you think? Or maybe a bank you're trying to get a loan from saw your message stream and now knows that you're also talking to a few other banks, or repo men, or what-have-you. Hmmm.... So even with confidentiality of the contents, you're still leaking information.
As such, this sort of card is only half the solution, especially since the state mandates that you have to use it, and it is so easy. What we really need is a single system that would support a single card (or multiple cards, if you'd like) with multiple identities.
I don't strictly mean birth certificate-backed identities, but at least so that you can separate out the loyalty cards and bus passes so that they can sit on the same card yet not tattle on each other. Because each such a card is an "identity" too, carrying a history, and I for one do not want them to be state-enforced on the same identity. In fact, this is the same reason why companies cannot be allowed to gather SSNs without clear law-prescribed purpose, and curiously, that is enshrined in law. Bit of an oversight that this is not.
No, simply saying "you can't mix that information!" is not enough, because it's unenforcable. You need a system where the holder of the identities can control who gets to see what. If the card doesn't support that, it is deficient, and a danger to its holder.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I like that idea. I don't understand why banks aren't doing this.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the key would actually be generated on the card, as it has its own cryptographic processor, and cpu. Its called a smart card.
I have no idea if they are actually doing this, as I am not estonian and am completely unfamiliar with thier ID card issuing process, but he seems to be implying that they do.
Remember, there are two ways to get a key on a smartcard. You can have it generate a key(which CAN be signed without the key leaving the card), or you can generate the key externally and then import it.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Informative)
The key pair is generated INSIDE the card. This is the norm with most PKCS11 cards. The private key never leaves the card, your public key is signed by state. So the state does not have your private key per se.
But that does not necessarily mean they have no means to decrypt it some other way - i don't even pretend to know that.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, and who had possession of the card before you? These sorts of schemes are perfectly fine for government communication, signing contracts, banking, whatever, but they don't provide "4th Amendment Compliant" privacy for things like personal correspondence or use within private and commercial organizations.
Re: (Score:2)
Upside -- you can destroy the card, rendering all private communications to you unreadable.
Downside -- same thing.
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup. That's pretty much the case, as i said. You lose the encrypted documents. Generally people don't use it to encrypt day-to-day communitcations. Many people here confuse security and privacy (especially from the government). While our id card system is extremely good and easy for security, its no good for privacy from the governement.
If i exchanged documents with someone that i want to hide from big brother, i would use PGP. But for legal communications with other individuals or businesses or government, i use the id card system.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, assumes that the card generates good key pairs and doesn't use some secret process that allows private key recovery from the public key. This has been done by card suppliers in the past.
As a side questions: Does any CA have a process for signing S/MIME certificates that can be generated outside of a browser?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Some chips have the ability to generate key material inside themselves that never leaves and requires destroying the chip to obtain. If the cards were using such a chip then even the government would not necessarily have the private key. Whether Estonia does that or not I don't know, but of all the governments I fear in the world, the government of Estonia is not one of them. I mean, please name one other government that actually encourages and makes it easy for its citizens to use strong end to end encrypt
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if I were leading a country and wanted to spy on all my citizens' e-mail, giving them all an easy way to encrypt their mail using keys I provided sure seems like a great way of achieving that goal.
However, the point is that you can securely communicate personal data with the government. In that case, you are not worried about the government being able to read your mail as they are precisely the ones you are communicating with. You just worry about criminals outside of the government. Also, you can saf
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:4, Funny)
(Note to NSA spies reading this: yes, I know your filter was triggered by the phrase "blow up the Estonian Parliament", sorry about that, false alarm, nothing to see here)
NSA, are you actually going to fall for that old ploy? Parent post is probably a message to an Estonian sleeper-cell.
Listen, "michelcolman" (is that your code-name?) the NSA aren't your average morons!
Strat
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:2)
I understand that for hiding things from the government the Estonian one is not an ideal solution. But the original problem involved communicating personal information with some kind of business entoty while securing privacy of said info from third parties while in transit. And for that the Estonian national ID card system is perfect as it is universal and accepted by everyone and all keys are in place and nothing needs to be exchanged.
If you want to hide something from the big brother you should not send t
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up. I'm genuinely curious what particular brand of idiot would wake up saying "hey, since the government provides me with this awesome crypto, I'll use it for everything" instead of generating his own keys for anything personal in nature.
I mean, heck, one might almost believe that such an individual were receiving telepathic communications from Edward Snowden detailing how to link up with Julian Assange in Afghanistan or Iraq to be schooled in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices for a
Re: This is why encryption isn't popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether or not you want to trust a card given by the government is one thing.
But if the government actively encourages people to encrypt stuff then there is greater awareness of privacy and encryption. It means that more people understand the concept of private/public keys and are more likely to generate their own keys and use them. They're also no afraid of encryption as a concept (and a question such as "how do I ask for their public key without sounding like a geek" doesn't exist). I think that's a positive thing.
Other countries actively discourage privacy - yes, you can encrypt stuff, but if you don't give us the password then you'll end up in jail and we don't have to prove a thing. And why teach the masses to encrypt? It's so much easier listening to communication in the clear, and we can even perpetuate the notion that if you encrypt your files or communication then you're clearly hiding something and you're probably a dangerous criminal/terrorist/paedophile, because normal people don't use encryption.
Re: (Score:2)
Enigmail for Thunderbird has a nice interface for keyservers hidden under some menu if I remember right.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just a user but I don't understand why it isn't dead simple and automatic.
For example, if I put john@doe.com in my recipient field, can't the email client send a standardised request to doe.com for the "john" public key? No doubt this leaves room for man-in-the-middle or whatever, but presumably this just means we are now putting email security reliance on existing security systems like SSL or certificates or whatever, rather than nothing at all?
Most webmail already defaults to SSL logins and could may
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I love PGP and frequently use it, but Entrust has much better system simply because they solved "send me your public key" problem. Unfortunately they solved it by assuming that you belong to a trusted organization, so individual senders are largely out of luck.
PGP won't help you (Score:5, Insightful)
The recipient will decrypt you data and lose it or possibly misuse it. That is the risk. But by all means ask for a secure way to get the data to them.
Re: (Score:2)
The recipient will decrypt you data and lose it or possibly misuse it. That is the risk. But by all means ask for a secure way to get the data to them.
You could always print it out and fax it or snail mail it. Probably more secure. Even if there is now one copy of the data in the trash after they are done with it.
Maybe talk to them about privacy concerns and ask if their operation has an ISO 27001 info security certification to help validate proven safe handling of data.
Re: PGP won't help you (Score:2)
The same could be said of any method you use. The end result will be a form in which data is outside your hands, in someone else's. whether paper, fax (also paper), optical media, or electronically transmitted by email, it still needs to be in a human readable and understandable format as the end result. And as a result of that... Unless you use the electronic version and have a document management DRM on it, it will always be in a form which can be copied, distributed, and potentially misused.
The key here
It's a lost cause (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Party!!! (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Not helpful in obtaining a key with which to send email.
You don't need to trust a key to use it. All you have to do is be assured that the recipient received and was able to read your email. If you communicate with that person via other means you simply ask if they got it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not helpful in obtaining a key with which to send email.
You don't need to trust a key to use it. All you have to do is be assured that the recipient received and was able to read your email. If you communicate with that person via other means you simply ask if they got it.
How do you know the recipient is actually the person you do intend to send messages to?
If the above is not an issue, why do you use encryption?
If they need the information... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they need the information they should have a secure way to receive it. I just refinanced, the broker had a secure site (SSL password protected file vault type interface hosted on their own servers) with a web interface that I could upload documents to.
If they don't have such a system in place already and routinely request and access peoples personal information your trust is severely misplaced.
Re: (Score:2)
If they need the information they should have a secure way to receive it. I just refinanced, the broker had a secure site (SSL password protected file vault type interface hosted on their own servers) with a web interface that I could upload documents to.
If they don't have such a system in place already and routinely request and access peoples personal information your trust is severely misplaced.
That's not a secure system unless you know how it's protected on the other end. If the uploaded files end up on the corporate fileserver that everyone in the office has access to (including any virus that seeks out SSN's on file shares and emails them to the world, or a rogue employee that figures our that he can increase his income by selling SSN's that he's scraped out of the open fileserver), then it's just the illusion of security. Kind of like those websites that say "Your credit card is safe with us,
Re:If they need the information... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice you know so much about their system from a single sentence. I especially like the fact that in particular you know so much about their system that it was accessible by anyone other than the loan officer and that you are so certain a virus not only was on their system but that it could scan for SSNs, including of course from scanned documents in PDF format (in other wise a bitmap image).
Do you often speculate so egregiously about something you do not even know the anything about?
You act as if you know intimate details of their IT configuration, security procedures and even employee reliability and you don't even know who the bank was (let alone anything else).
Honestly if I have to worry about the broker (who also happened to be a bank) having employees that are going to run off with my SSN then whether or not the transmission was secure is of little importance. I might add that just because you did it hard copy the same rambling risks you listed still applied to you or do you honestly believe the paper copies you received were the only copies ever made or that those same documents in electronic format weren't stored on their servers?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, you have no way of controlling, or even knowing, how the receiving company will handle your private information. The best you can do is protect the actual transmission of the information, which SSL should do for you.
How? (Score:4, Funny)
How Do I Request Someone To Send Me a Public Key?
I prefer signal fires myself.
Plot hole (Score:2)
If IT sets it up, won't they have the key?
Switch to an easier technology (Score:5, Informative)
PGP is beyond the grasp of the average secretary or other end user. Unless you know for a fact that the person disseminating the data is familiar with PGP; you should probably not be asking them for their public key.
I strongly recommend an encrypted PDF, Word Document (.DOCX), or Excel file (.XLSX); make sure to choose a strong password.
I like the Office 2010 strong encryption and use of key stretching to make brute force password attacks hard --- but there is a free of charge reader available for PDF documents, and you should pick a strong password for encrypted documents anyways.
Technically, you could implement DRM rights management services on your end, so the user has to contact your organization's RMS server over HTTPS for a license every time the document is opened, but it requires a trust relationship between orgs, or you having an account for the user.
But the simple password protection is a very nice way to protect it. You can include a note in the e-mail message that you will be calling them to give them the password, so they can see the document.
Then there is no confusion about what a 'PGP key is'. If you _regularly_ exchange a lot of documents with them, then you might ask to discuss using PGP
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't use Word (.doc). That was some of the stupidest password protecting I have ever seen.
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't use Word (.doc). That was some of the stupidest password protecting I have ever seen.
Right... the original protection scheme prior to Office 97 was very weak XOR encryption. In Word 2000 it was 56 bit RC4 encryption, which can be brute forced.
You need to use a Word 2007 or 2010 document format to achieve strong protection, and preferably 2010.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a terrible idea. What self-respecting corporation would store a document in an encrypted format, which they did not have the means to decrypt without external assistance? Consumers may be dumb enough to do this, but any IT department worth their salt wouldn't permit it.
The other organization's IT department doesn't have a legal say in how you as author of a document choose to license your work to their IT organization. Protection of privacy rights trumps the recipient's rights.
You don't
Re: Switch to an easier technology (Score:2)
But that company probably have no legal requirement to deal with you either, they'll just insist you submit it their way and if you don't then stop processing your case. Good luck trying to find a lawyer who'll take on non-delivery of a product or service or job application or payout or whatever because you insisted on delivering it in some weird format. The government is in theory better, in practice nobody cares if you don't get your building permit or driver's license or social security number either.
Buying a house (Score:3)
I ran into this situation very recently, im in the process of buying a house. It was a bit of a shock to me how much personal information they wanted. And most through email. And how my data is being passed along from business to business without good security.
I use good practices on my side like two factor authentication, and ssl on everything, even a bit of pgp. But the other side who knows.
you are pushing shit up hill with that request (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking Slashdot for advice on being polite?? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't have the social skills to phrase a polite question, Slashdot is perhaps not the ideal place to go looking for advice...
Technical issues with giving anyone your private key aside (I can't think of any reason to give it out to someone no matter how much you trust them) just explaining things clearly should work for any reasonable person:
"I have no problem with you having my personal key, but I am concerned about the integrity of the data while in transit. I would appreciate it if you can supply me with a public key for your organization, then I will be able to encode my key so that only you can decode it. This will ensure that our mutual privacy won't be at risk due to using an insecure communication system such as Email. Thanks very much!" etc
Re: (Score:2)
Whoops - I misread the post - they're not asking for your private KEY, just private data... ah well, most of the suggested sentence structure still holds.
Companies don't have public email keys (Score:2)
The easiest way to get someone's public key is to convince them to send you a signed message. That is, if your email software can handle it. A signed message contains the sender's public key, and hopefully your email software allows you to stash that key away (automatically) and from then on send encrypted messages to that person.
Chances a
Simple. Don't. (Score:3)
For one, people don't perceive email as something that can easily be snooped, and if they do they'll think it's something like a chance encounter as if it's a regular piece of mail where you have to be at a certain point at a certain time to be able to snatch the mail, plus have to have a reasonable idea what you're looking for as a mail thief.
Secondly, and I cannot stress this enough, it's a f'ing drag to use. It's not easy to install. It's not easy to set up, and it's far from user friendly on a day to day basis.
Besides the fact that email encryption isn't commonplace, as long as you aren't sending you pin number or medical data on a regular basis (daily), why bother to be honest. You'll get a stamp as "that weird guy" if you start about PGP etc, and that'll last. If you want to send it securely, just wrap it in an encrypted container, like a ZIP or RAR file and phone them the password.
Forget it (except for PGP) (Score:2)
At least with GPG/PGP you can roll a key with no effort and there are public key servers to upload the public key. Persuading someone else to generate such a key and use it is another matter. Probably needs a strong bus
No, they don't. (Score:3)
"An organization wants me to send them my personal data by email."
"But they do have a pretty good IT department"
No. They don't. Or their IT department is seriously underpowered in terms of getting through to their staff. Don't send personal data by email. If they don't have a system to let you do this (e.g. secured web form, etc.) then their IT department is already a bit of a failure. If they do, their staff would use it and tell you about it.
If you want to ask, just ask. "I'm not going to send personal data by unencrypted email - what is your procedure for encrypted email?"
Chances are, they won't have one and will just ask you to send the details unencrypted or by another method entirely.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Prove it. Prove that every piece of data would end up in a NSA datacenter...that the world we live is in so badly designed that this is necessary.
If the NSA is hell-bent on compromising the security of day to day operations, then they are acting as an enemy, not a friend. Secure operations, whether personal or corporate, means that ONLY the intended parties can view the damn information...if there are weakened structures placed within for reasons contrary to this, then the data isn't really secure, and as s
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you look at what happened to Edward Snowden or Bradley Mannings, and you see it personally costs a lot to prove anything, which is why we will not often have proofs.
I agree with you on NSA role, but I think that the solution is more political than technical. US citizen now have to regain control over their government, and put and end to this massive surveillance state. Such intrusive setup benefit/cost analysis advocates to get it dismantled, as we see other countries that manage to thwart terrorism
Why worry? (Score:2)
I don't see why you should be concerned about the request or how "polite" it is. A simple statement to the effect that "I do not send personal information over the Internet without encryption. Please send me instructions as to how your company handles encrypted email. My preferred method is GnuPG, and this will be the quickest and easiest way from my end, but I can try to accommodate other methods."
EXPLICITLY ask them NOT to send the private key (Score:3)
this is really important. people who don't know what ssh keys are will typically send you the id_rsa (private) key file.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you say to them EXPLICITLY and VERY CLEARLY, "please send me the public key file *only*. DO NOT send me the PRIVATE key. you can identify the private key because it is named xyz. i ONLY want you to send me the PUBLIC key, it is named xyz.pub. if you send me the private key, you will have to destroy it and we will have to start again, so ONLY send me the PUBLIC key, ok?"
and get them to acknowledge what you've said. do not be afraid to "piss them off" by having to be so absolutely specific. make sure you end the sentence with what you *want* them to do, *not* what you *don't* want them to do. depending on the person they could potentially remove the "negative" by their subconscious and do exactly what you ask... with the words "no", "not", "don't" etc. removed.
also if you want to be paranoid then use the signature-thing (fingerprint). get them to read it out to you over the phone (not by email).
Makes me wish there was a followup option... (Score:2)
S/MIME (Score:3)
I use www.djigzo.com. It's open source, it uses S/MIME, it's server based, and it's easy to use.
Seriously? (Score:2)
You're asking how to ask a question? You request them to send a public PGP key so that you can encrypt the email. If they don't know what that means, you elaborate and point them in the right direction.
The same technique can be extrapolated to any request that you have in life.
Trying Again (Score:2)
"The public key may be published without compromising security"
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography [wikipedia.org]
I had previously written:
Send the public key in a normal open email and confirm the hash by voice.
It's the private key that's sensitive and should be kept secure.
Very annoying to be modded down with no explanation. If you disagree with what I'm posting please reply and explain your position.
Re: (Score:2)
You should not let a missing explanation bother you. You will never get an explanation for any moderation. When you moderate a comment and then submit a comment on the same post, the system undoes your moderation. However, Slashdot's moderation is slightly less ham fisted than most. The system lets you pick a single word that lets the commenter know why his comment is moderated the way it is.
Your previous comment was moderated "Offtopic." Kudos to the moderator that did it. From the original post,
My question is, what is the proper wording for such a request?
You haven'
Re: (Score:2)
Use simple password based encryption (Score:2)
And in your email ask them to call you for the password.
Snail mail? (Score:2)
Is the destination secure? (Score:2)
You havent said if you expect the decryption on the other side to be safe! Is this security only for in-transit? If they are just going to decrypt the data on the other side and plop it in a company share that you are just as much at risk.
Tried it when HIPAA started -- FAIL (Score:2)
Re:just be straight up (Score:5, Insightful)
If the data is important enough to encrypt then the public key is important enough to get properly. Asking the person who answers the phones to send you the key is not properly. Even asking the IT department to send it probably isn't good enough as they are in the perfect position to give you their fake key, intercept the email, decrypt it, then re-send it with the real key to the real recipient.
If you are just worried about casual snooping of your "personal data", then just use something like 7zip and provide them with the password out-of-band.
Re: (Score:3)
This.
Ideally, Public keys should be exchanged in person, or be obtained by a third party that you trust.
Failing that, a public key for some company or person with whom you wish to send encrypted email can often be found on their website. And if its been there for a while, and can be verified by a key server, then it is probably good enough to send them encrypted mail with, but you still don't know for sure who they are.
But at least you know that what you send won't be seen by every prying eye along the ro
Re: (Score:3)
Just imagine if we had some system were you could cryptographically secure DNS values, and some defined TXT record were you could expect to get an organizations public key.
This would work nicely because the client could safely and automatically fetch the key, encrypt the message, or just sign it. It would then be ciphered at least as far as the last hop publicly exposed mail server, safe from prying eyes at your ISP, their mail rescue service, etc.
Sure it only works for org level keys, but it would be an e
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I searched and found this: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4398 [ietf.org] "Storing Certificates in the Domain Name System (DNS)"
GPG supports it! http://www.gushi.org/make-dns-cert/HOWTO.html [gushi.org]
It works for emails -- alice.example.org is for alice@example.org.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes I was being sarcastic, I am a little uncomfortable with listing all the mail addresses in DNS, all someone has to do to know mail addresses are valid to spam is look them up. That isn't desirable.
It is a great system though for domain level keys. Though/
Re:IT Dept (Score:4, Insightful)
So now a random guy in the IT department has the data, as well as the intended recipient, who then forwards it on in plain text to the PA of the guy who wants it.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea is not to actually send encrypted mail to the IT department, but to shame the IT guy into doing something he should have had set up along time ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, no. Security / encryption, especially at this level, versus the average office worker...probably not IT holding it up there. At least, not the IT I know, who would mandate PGP for all emails, file, etc. if they could get away with it. It's a cost vs. benefits thing -> if something goes wrong with PGP, you're going to hear about it; lost your private key, didn't back it up? Well, all your files are now inaccessible and uncrackable (the NSA / FBI / etc. can, in theory, crack a weak PGP key, if they t
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't use GPG...
(photo of a lock and key)
FUCK YOU!
No, you have been, you are being and you will be fucked.