OpenPGP.js and PidgeonPG

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Jon Spriggs

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May 13, 2013, 4:44:30 AM5/13/13
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Hi All,

Spotted these two projects this morning - Pidgeon Privacy Guard [1] and OpenPGP.js [2] which are (respectively) FireFox and Chrome centric javascript implementations of PGP for the browser, without requiring the native applications to be deployed.

I found them as a result of a post on Daily JS [3] pointing to a Chrome extension (and soon to be firefox extension too) Mailvelope [4] a successor to FireGPG [5]. Following a few links, I also ended up at a similar project using the same OpenPGP.js script, called SafeWith.me [6]

Critically, for me at least, SafeWith.me includes instructions for running your own server portion, while Mailvelope requires no server-side code.
[6] http://safewith.me and https://github.com/tanx/SafeWith.me
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Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs

pir...@gmail.com

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May 13, 2013, 4:48:28 AM5/13/13
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Fairly interesting :-) Are they browser extensions or plain Javascript libraries? Any portable solution for serverless authentification in this way?

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Jon Spriggs

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May 13, 2013, 4:54:25 AM5/13/13
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OpenPGP.js is a javascript library, but looks like it needs Firefox 21 (current stable is 20) before it'll do anything in-browser on Firefox - I don't use Chrome, so I don't know what requirements it has there, while PidgeonPG looks to be an extension, although there is code in the library to support RoundCube mail... so it looks like that might have been the development impetus?

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Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs


pir...@gmail.com

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May 13, 2013, 4:59:41 AM5/13/13
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I have been reading the documentation of OpenPGP.js and seems it's a plain Javascript library, just ideal for my purposes :-) Thanks for the tip, I was looking something similar to it but since I'm not a security guy didn't know where to start! :-D

Jon Spriggs

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May 13, 2013, 5:23:38 AM5/13/13
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I should add, I've not vetted this script, so I can't guarantee whether it's useful, feature complete and non-buggy, however, as a concept, it's very interesting :)

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Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs


Leen Besselink

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May 13, 2013, 6:35:01 AM5/13/13
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On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 09:54:25AM +0100, Jon Spriggs wrote:
> OpenPGP.js is a javascript library, but looks like it needs Firefox 21
> (current stable is 20) before it'll do anything in-browser on Firefox - I
> don't use Chrome, so I don't know what requirements it has there, while
> PidgeonPG looks to be an extension, although there is code in the library
> to support RoundCube mail... so it looks like that might have been the
> development impetus?
>

It uses the WebCryptoAPI to get good random numbers:

http://www.w3.org/2012/webcrypto/WebCryptoAPI/
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Window.crypto

So that is the reason it depends on the Firefox version.

Did anyone notice the image at the bottom of the OpenPGP.js website mentions unhosted.org ?

http://openpgpjs.org/

pir...@gmail.com

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May 13, 2013, 6:37:50 AM5/13/13
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> It uses the WebCryptoAPI to get good random numbers:
>

Cool! :-D

> Did anyone notice the image at the bottom of the OpenPGP.js website mentions unhosted.org ?
>

Yes I did :-D

Manuel Schölling

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May 13, 2013, 6:37:52 AM5/13/13
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Hi,

what a bummer, it's funny that you write this right now: I ported GnuPG
to javascript yesterday using emscripten and I will release the code in
a few days ;)

I will post it here as soon as it's ready. Maybe it'll be a good
alternative for one of you.

Cheers,

Manuel

pir...@gmail.com

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May 13, 2013, 6:40:09 AM5/13/13
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Maybe some speeds comparations? ;-)


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