Recent study shows modern PGP isnt that much "private"
http://www.scmagazine.com/modern-pgp-is-unusable-according-to-academic-study/article/451166/
Modern study says PGP is unusable
Recent study shows modern PGP isnt that much "private"
http://www.scmagazine.com/modern-pgp-is-unusable-according-to-academic-study/article/451166/
[7 Points] mabythat:
[3 Points] Finga_lickin:
In a laboratory study of 20 individuals, grouped into 10 pairs,
With only 20 people in the study this is not nearly enough to call it a good sample or an accurate study. Seriously you need to get tens of thousands of people in a study before you even start to get some what realistic numbers for the vast majority of people.
All of the participants were chosen partly on the basis of having a Gmail account.
I like their prerequisite for subjects in this study, real scholar like.
The researchers recommended that Mailvelope should have some integrated tutorials to help new users through the setup process and it should include an “approachable description” of public key cryptography to help users manage their own keys.
There is no link to the study itself so I can't be sure how they did the test but from what i can tell they gave the participants absolutely NO instructions. If i got a group of 20 people who had never worn shoes before and gave them all pair of shoes then asked them to tie them, i would bet alomst none of them would get it anywhere near right. Maybe if one of them had studied shoes before he could figure it out, like this guy:
the successful pair was unique in having a participant who had previously studied public key cryptography.
Also, really not sure about the validity of this article because of this sentence:
Even the creator of PGP doesn't use PGP because it doesn't work with his MacBook.
As someone who owns a few macs (macbook, macbook pro, Imacs, Mac Pros, etc) PGP works on all of them, i promise you. Here is a tutorial how to set it up with key short cuts in under 20 minutes:
http://notes.jerzygangi.com/the-best-pgp-tutorial-for-mac-os-x-ever/
Here's the full article about the guy who made PGP but doesn't use it on his Mac:
http://www.scmagazineuk.com/the-creator-of-pgp-doesnt-use-pgp-spurring-discussion/article/436616/
from that article:
Zimmerman noted in his comments to Motherboard that he would try to use GPG Tools, which operates with Macs, although he said he'd have to learn how to set it up.
So hard to believe the creator of PGP would have a hard time learning how to set it up on a Mac.
This can hardly be called a real study and these findings are nearly useless. The only thing we can really learn from this study that if you give someone a task to do but absolutely no instruction on how to do it they probably won't do it right or how you wanted it done.
[2 Points] MLP_is_my_OPSEC:
GnuPG is the best implementation of it. GPGTools on OS X, Tails' OpenGPG, and GPA & GPG4USB for Windows.
[2 Points] _Diacetylmorphine_:
Are people really that dumb these days? Most people can't figure out PGP?
Think they should change that to Modern PGP client is unusable according to academic study, They didnt say pgp is unusable just that some client are difficult to use. Fell like it was False advertisement or something