Hello!
Just right now I have read about a security vulnerability in the PGP 
keyservers, that can likely not be fixed according to Heise Online.
That makes me writing about something I have been thinking of for quiet some 
time now:
I am working in an environment that deals with highly sensitive personal data 
and my first PGP-key dates back to as far as the mid 1990s. Meanwhile I have 
changed it a few times, going from PGP 2.3 to the DH/DSS-Keys propagated by PGP 
5 and then back to RSA-Keys with GnuPG.
When looking at my In- and Outbox over the whole time I can safely say that I 
received and send only about 25 (!) mails in all the years and that many of my 
contacts simply have no PGP or don't use it any longer. It is easier and more 
reliable to send sensitive data by fax or mail for them.
Many attempts to make mail encryption easier have failed and the standards we 
have for it are aging. S/MIME was never repaired after the so called 
efail-attack and OpenPGP relies on a SHA1-based modification detection code to 
protect from it as far as I know. Many other aspects are also far from moderns 
standards.
Beyond this the complicated (and now dysfunctional as stated above) 
keydistribution caused many people to either send mails unencrypted, use 
regular mail or fax or use encrypting messengers nowadays.
The renewal of the OpenPGP-standard has stopped or stalled last year and the 
additions to GnuPG were also rather small in the past years (aside from ECC).
So my question as a user with a need for strong mail encryption is, whether it 
is not a time to start over with an all new encryption standard replacing 
OpenPGP and S/MIME completely. Something like the much praised Wireguard is 
doing right now in the VPN-world.
Implementing just one (or two if needed) standardized modern method for each of 
the following basic components: s2k-function, hash algorithm, authenticating 
symmetric crypto-algorithm, one ECC-based and one conventional asymmetric 
crypto-algorithm. And somethin to ease the key distribution. OPENPGPKEY and WKD 
might be suitable for that.
Thats it. No backwards compatibility. All new lean and easy. In my experience 
there are so few people actually using OpenPGP and these are crypto experienced 
so they should eysily adopt the modern proposal. If really needed the old 
standards could be supported for some time in a seperate "classic" component, 
but without the ability to create new keys.
To propagate the distribution of this hypothetical new format it might be 
useful to get some of the major mailproviders, business software companies and 
mail software vendors might be useful, another problem of OpenPGP was and is 
that aditional software components are needed.
Once again: I know that won't be easy or perhaps it can't be done at all. I 
really appreciate the work and commitment of Werner and all the others here and 
I am donatig each year to support them. But their work is simply not working in 
the real world. Sorry to say so, but that's my eperience and view  as a user 
-or let's better say wannabe user as there is no one to write encrypted mails 
to... ;)
Thanks for reading and discussing!
Karel

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