Sage-Tips

Is it illegal to have a PGP?

It is probable (not certain, but probable) that PGP falls under the ITAR restrictions, which control the export of munitions and cryptographic technology from the US and Canada. If this is the case, it is illegal to export PGP from the USA or Canada to any other country.

Can PGP be hacked?

People Are Freaking Out That PGP Is ‘Broken’—But You Shouldn’t Be Using It Anyway. Hackers that can intercept your encrypted emails, or steal your emails from your computer or a server, may be able to decrypt them taking advantage of new vulnerabilities found in the way some email clients treat HTML.

How strong is PGP?

Because of the strict requirements of this encryption method, it is considered one of the most secure encryption systems available to the public. PGP security guarantees the privacy of content using PGP encryption by requiring the receiver to have two keys: a public key and a private key.

Can the NSA break PGP encryption?

For this reason, when you read messages saying that “someone told them” that the NSA is able to break PGP, take it with a grain of salt and ask for some documentation on exactly where the information is coming from. In particular, the story called NSA Can Break PGP Encryption is a joke.

What went wrong with PGP encryption tools?

PGP encryption tools and OTR chat encryption also caused major problems for the agency, causing entire messages to disappear from the system, leaving only the message: “No decrypt available for this PGP encrypted message.” “No decrypt available for this PGP encrypted message.”

Does PGP protect me if my secret key is compromised?

A: PGP does not protect you if you use your secret key on a compromised system, i.e. you type your passphrase and sign or decrypt something, or if you stored the passphrase in plaintext on the compromised system (as described in How can I give my passphrase to the commandline PGP automatically? ).

What is the minimum security level of a PGP key?

PGP used to recommend 384-bit keys as “casual grade” security; recent versions offer 768 bits as a recommended minimum security level. Note that this effort cracked only a single RSA key. If this had been a PGP key, it would have allowed them to decrypt all messages encrypted to that key.