Talk:1553: Public Key

2015-07-22T09:16:12Z

198.41.243.252:

I'm assuming he's referring to the GPG/PGP Key. Basically you have a key pair, one private that you use to sign/encrypt and one public, which can be used to verify your private key was used to sign. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography Wikipedia] for more information. If you posted your private key, anyone could sign as if they were you. I sign pretty much everything (not to mailing lists though), but don't think I've seen anyone else ever do so, even those I know have keys. See [[1181: PGP]] for more. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.235.35|198.41.235.35]] 04:59, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

:Don't believe everything certification authorities are telling you. X.509 SSL certificates works exactly same. Certificate is just a public key signed by certification authority. And yes, you can sign email with X.509 certificate. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 09:54, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

This comic should be added to [[:Category:Cryptography]], but I'm not sure how to do that or whether I can do that. [[User:Nick818|Nick818]] ([[User talk:Nick818|talk]]) 07:06, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

:{{u|Nick818}}—Someone did this today, but for your future reference, you just need to add <tt><nowiki>[[Category:Cryptography]]</nowiki></tt> to the page that needs to be categorized. It's helpful and customary to add the code to the bottom of the page. Cheers, [[User:Jameslucas|jameslucas]] <small>([[User talk:Jameslucas|" "]] / [[Special:Contributions/Jameslucas|+]])</small> 10:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

This explanation completely misses the point that the PGP workflow is fundamentally flawed which has been stated by more than one expert, e.g. famously last year by Matthew Green, leading to demands to "let it die" and be replaced by something workable. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.190|108.162.254.190]] 11:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
:The problem is, that there isn’t anything more “workable” at the moment. <small>BTW: 7CD1E35FD2A3A158</small>. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 11:27, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
::Well, I don't want to solve the problem of front-end cryptography here, and this site won't either. But the comic appeared in a climate of a quite general consensus and acceptance of the failure of PGP/GPG, and not technically but because of social and usability reasons. This explanation letting out that is quite comically in itself. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.190|108.162.254.190]] 13:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
:::The main problem of end-to-end email cryptography is serious lack of companies who would actually WANT to do it properly. Most companies are directly interrested in violating your privacy. Keeping hard-to-work-with PGP is in their benefit. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:10, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Remember Responsible Behavior? https://xkcd.com/364/ [[User:Xquestion|Xquestion]] ([[User talk:Xquestion|talk]]) 13:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

But did the author post his public key anywhere ? :v [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.166|141.101.104.166]] 17:29, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Worth noting that posting his private key actually would be crowdsourcing his signing decisions, since anyone could do it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.102|108.162.221.102]] 04:57, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

FWIW, I use PGP. :)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iEYEARECAAYFAlWuhWoACgkQHkr3KdXO/9A/ZACeM5Oho5XEDZnjo2q4yZBTqABo
ET0Ani928heXg9aHmju0e0aK8JV7pvxH
=CsEo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
''— [[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 18:17, 21 July 2015 (UTC)''

"the keys themselves do not hold "private" or "public" roles until one is released and becomes the public key" --- that might be true of ''some'' crypto-systems, but it is definite '''not''' true of anything based on RSA, such as PGP/GPG. The prime factors (or exponents derived from them) are definitely the "private" part, and the composite product is definitely the "public" part. You '''cannot'' simply choose which part of the pair to make public. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.181|108.162.238.181]] 19:54, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

"The prime factors (or exponents derived from them) are definitely the "private" part, and the composite product is definitely the "public" part". This is completely incorrect. In PGP (or rather, RSA keys used by PGP), both the public and private keys consist of just the modulus '''n''' (composite product) and one of the exponents '''d''' or '''e'''. However, the "public" exponent is typically chosen to be small and with few bits set, so that encryption/decryption using the public key is fast. The private key has to be big in order to keep the search space wide. So by switching around the public and private keys you end up with a public exponent that is a 600 digit number and a private exponent that is probably the number 65537. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.243.252|198.41.243.252]] 09:16, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1553: Public Key