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Old 14 May 2018, 05:48 PM   #1
edu
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PGP/GPG and S/MIME vulnerability

Bad news folks...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ake-action-now

https://twitter.com/seecurity/status/995906576170053633
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Old 14 May 2018, 10:37 PM   #2
janusz
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EFF's says, in the article quoted by the OP:
Quote:
Our advice, which mirrors that of the researchers, is to immediately disable and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email.
How many people bother with PGP in general, and using it for email encryption in particular?
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Old 14 May 2018, 11:09 PM   #3
edu
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Quote:
Originally Posted by janusz View Post
EFF's says, in the article quoted by the OP:

How many people bother with PGP in general, and using it for email encryption in particular?
I´m using it in 1 of my email accounts. Now it´s disabled until...
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Old 15 May 2018, 01:05 AM   #4
janusz
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OK, so it's fair to assume some of your friends use it too ...

Anyway, an explainer is here.
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Old 15 May 2018, 01:35 AM   #5
edu
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Quote:
Originally Posted by janusz View Post
OK, so it's fair to assume some of your friends use it too ...

Anyway, an explainer is here.
Thanks for the link
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Old 15 May 2018, 03:13 AM   #6
edu
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GnuPG official statement

Please read:

https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gn...ay/060334.html
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Old 15 May 2018, 03:33 AM   #7
janusz
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The last sentence of the GnuPG official statement says (my emphasis):
Quote:
A whole lot of people got scared, and over very little.
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Old 15 May 2018, 10:05 AM   #8
pjwalsh
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[OpenPGP] Email clients vulnerable / not-vulnerable.
https://efail.de/media/efail-disclosure-pgp.png

On the S/MIME side, only Claws and Mutt were found not vulnerable.

Efail
- Mitigations

From the GnuPG statement:

1. This paper is misnamed. It's not an attack on OpenPGP. It's an attack on broken email clients that ignore GnuPG's warnings and do silly things after being warned.

2. This attack targets buggy email clients. Correct use of the MDC completely prevents this attack. GnuPG has had MDC support since the summer of 2000.

Last edited by pjwalsh : 16 May 2018 at 09:22 AM.
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Old 15 May 2018, 12:39 PM   #9
chrisretusn
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My first reaction was oh my, also a little bit of yet another (not really) scare to the masses. After reading a bit, in particular the OpenPGP response and this series of tweets:
Quote:
Jan “I am my own bot” Wildeboer
‏ @jwildeboer
20h20 hours ago
Replying to @seecurity @x0rz

Why the drama? Why not simply release the details now instead of Hollywood style „come back tomorrow for more!“
3 replies 3 retweets 71 likes
Sebastian Schinzel
‏ @seecurity
20h20 hours ago

Because of the reasons you'll learn tomorrow.
9 replies 4 retweets 61 likes
Jan “I am my own bot” Wildeboer
‏ @jwildeboer
19h19 hours ago

EFF focuses on PGP, while you also mention S/MIME. I gather standalone use of GPG/PGP is safe? If yes, that should be made very clear. Or should we stop signing rpms, git commits with GPG too?
3 replies 2 retweets 21 likes
Sebastian Schinzel
‏ @seecurity
19h19 hours ago

The tweets and blog posts were written very carefully. Please also read them carefully. They contain anything you need to know until tomorrow.
2 replies 2 retweets 33 likes
I am going with yet another (not really scare).

I see by the report https://efail.de/ that as the OpenPGP folks state it a buggy email thing. It also bugs me a bit that a web site was created just for this. Wow! That really means it must be bad. This plays in fo fear big time. Just reading the web site has me want to run for cover.

Quote:
Originally Posted by janusz View Post
The last sentence of the GnuPG official statement says (my emphasis): A whole lot of people got scared, and over very little.
Pretty much sums it up.

On a plus side. My client is not vulnerable.

Last edited by chrisretusn : 15 May 2018 at 12:49 PM.
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Old 15 May 2018, 01:09 PM   #10
pjwalsh
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No, PGP is not broken, not even with the Efail vulnerabilities
ProtonMail Blog, May 14
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Old 16 May 2018, 02:04 PM   #11
chrisretusn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pjwalsh View Post
Good article.
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Old 18 May 2018, 12:15 PM   #12
pjwalsh
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Enigmail was updated yesterday to correct for the vulnerability (May 16, v2.0.4).
https://enigmail.net/index.php/en/download/changelog

Mailvelope, the OpenPGP extension for Chrome and Firefox, was not subject to the Efail vulnerabilities.
https://www.mailvelope.com/en/blog/i...-on-mailvelope
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Old 22 May 2018, 01:23 AM   #13
Mailfence
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Representative of:
Mailfence.com
Mailfence: Blogpost in regards to Efail vulnerabilities.

Mailfence blogpost: Mailfence is not impacted by Efail vulnerabilities.
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