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gtank writes here
Personal blog · blog.gtank.ccsecurity
gtank writes here is a personal blog at blog.gtank.cc about security. Since 2019, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Modern Alternatives to PGP”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its posts on modern cryptography and alternatives to PGP, including 'Modern Alternatives to PGP', which one commenter says has been frequently cited on HN. Other links point to its posts on Macaroons and file encryption.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Modern Alternatives to PGP7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-02-15
What Hacker News says?
I once made something similar after reading a blog post here on HN [1] just to see how easy it is to make something like this. Mine [2] uses passphrases to generate keys with the Argon2 algorithm and then uses NaCl's secretbox for encryption. I also made a version for use on streams. It's not up to snuff for industrial use, but it's really easy to use if you just want to encrypt some files with a password and also v…
Comment linking /modern-alternatives-to-pgp/
on “Age: A simple, modern and secure file encryption tool”Submitted Modern Alternatives to PGP as a story · 313 points
HN discussionOn the one hand, I am glad it finally got the proper funding. On the other hand, I would prefer more effort going into more modern implementations [1] or protocols[2][3]. [1] https://sequoia-pgp.org/ [2] https://www.cryptologie.net/article/502/alternatives-to-pgp/ [3] https://blog.gtank.cc/modern-alternatives-to-pgp/
Comment linking /modern-alternatives-to-pgp/
on “A New Future for GnuPG”Submitted Modern Alternatives to PGP as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSounds like OP is having a bit of a Chesterton's Fence moment. It's clearly complicated, but you describe why this is probably implemented the way it is. The scheme reminds me of Macaroons: https://blog.gtank.cc/macaroons-reading-list/
Comment linking /macaroons-reading-list/
on “Does anyone else finds AWS and other Amazon services overly complicated?”Submitted Modern Alternatives to PGP (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe guy who wrote the OP is the guy behind Signal. That's the most obvious alternative. But there's not a go-to answer because the lesson learned from PGP is that there can't be a single crypto Swiss army knife of a protocol. There are conflicting tradeoffs that necessitate the use of different protocols for different use cases. The best replacement for PGP is probably a basket of different protocols. See for exampl…
Comment linking /modern-alternatives-to-pgp/
on “GPG and Me (2015)”Submitted Adding privacy to legacy protocols with zero-knowledge proofs as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhat's the materially better option for encrypting files for myself? I currently do this with "gpg -v -ear tzs@...". I want a public key system for this so that I do not need to enter a passphrase when encrypting. I've read the "Modern Alternatives to PGP" page by George Tankersley that has been frequently cited on HN [1], but all it gives for this is using nacl/box, and suggests Keybase's saltpack as a format. I'm…
Comment linking /modern-alternatives-to-pgp/
on “Rnp: An OpenPGP Library in C++”
