[isalist] "Announcing TGP - Thor's Godly Privacy"

From: Steve Moffat <Steve@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:12:21 +0000
Greetings:

After a brief intro to full disclosure, I'm now releasing a new tool I call 
"TGP - Thor's Godly Privacy."

As the name may indicate (other than the tongue-in-cheek egoism), it is an 
encryption tool that offers a bit more than your standard "for pay" tools and a 
better implementation (I think) than many free ones.   You can find the full 
skinny at:

http://www.hammerofgod.com/tgp.html

Here is a brief snip from the "About TGP" bookmark for context:

<Begin snip>
TGP is a small yet very powerful encryption utility.  With all eyes on "the 
cloud," I decided to write an encryption application better suited to an 
environment where portability and security were, at the least, challenging.   
In cloud computing, not only is the use of file structures becoming more 
abstract, but the very concept of a "file server" is becoming more and more 
ubiquitous.

As such, I designed TGP with "encryption for the cloud" in mind.  That means 
that not only does TGP do everything your normal PGP-type applications do, but 
it does things a bit differently - differently in a way that can change the way 
you work with your encrypted data.  At the simplest level, this is done by 
encrypting data into byte arrays, and then converting those byte arrays into 
Base64 encoded text wrapped inside XML tags.  In this way, not only do you get 
your typical file-based encrypted representation of your data, but you also get 
data that you can copy and paste directly into any email, mailing list, 
blog-page, or social networking site if you choose to.  It also makes 
processing multiple encrypted files as key management much easier that other 
implementations as the XML encoding allows you to processes and manage 
encrypted data files or blobs programmatically.

What I think is interesting about this is that if we choose to, we no longer 
have to be the custodians of our encrypted data - we don't have to worry about 
actually housing the files: we can just post them to the internet and let 
someone else assume the burden of storing the files for us while still offering 
security.

If I want to share encrypted files with someone or secure my own files, all I 
have to do is TGP encrypt the data I want, and post it to a mailing list 
somewhere.  In the case of a list like Bugtraq or Full Disclosure, the data is 
actually automatically replicated out to any number of archive sites, thus 
distributing my data for me.  I can literally be anywhere in the world and just 
do a quick search for keywords in my posts to retrieve my data.  And since the 
TGP public key files are also text representations of encrypted key data, I can 
do the same with my keys.  I think that offers up some very interesting use 
cases.

Normally, you want to keep your private keys as safe as possible.  This is 
still the case with TGP.  However, it is trivial to build as many private keys 
as you  wish to use for anything you want to use them for.  TGP Private Key 
files are password protected and individually salted, so with a strong 
passphrase you have very reasonable assurance that no one is going to get to 
your key any time soon.  So, you can create a private key with a strong 
password, post that, and then, say, encrypt a scan of your passport and post 
that.  Then if you are ever in a pinch while travelling or something like that, 
you can simply use Google or Bing to access your data wherever you are.

Of course, that's just an example, but I think it illustrates the power of 
encrypted file structures like this.  You can literally use Facebook to post 
encrypted documents that you don't have to maintain and use Facebook as a 
distribution method for you to securely exchange data without actually have to 
possess it.
<End snip>

Any questions are comments are welcome.  TGP is totally free as are all Hammer 
of God utilities.

T

Get Hammered!



Timothy "Thor" Mullen
Hammer of God
thor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.hammerofgod.com
[isalist] "Announcing TGP - Thor's Godly Privacy"

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