Hello, OpenPGP CA

We are pleased to share that version 0.10.1 of OpenPGP CA has been released! This is also the first version which is available on crates.io.

OpenPGP CA is a tool for administrators to create and manage a decentralized, in-house certification authority. OpenPGP CA makes it possible and easy for an organization to delegate authentication decisions to someone they can rely on, like their system administrator. And, external groups and individuals can use these CAs to authenticate certificates for just that organization using OpenPGP’s scoped trust signatures. OpenPGP CA also helps with key discovery and key updates by managing a Web Key Directory (WKD).

What is OpenPGP CA?

Let’s say your organization wants to protect email that is sent internally as well as email that is exchanged with important partners who also use the same encryption standard. To make the scenario concrete, let’s say that there are 50 people in your organization, and that you have a small IT team. How do you do it?

To achieve this using OpenPGP, the IT department could organize something like a CryptoParty. First, someone would hold an hour or two lecture explaining the basics behind confidentiality, integrity, and authentication, why they are important, and how they are achieved in OpenPGP. Then, there would be an install party where everyone installs the right mail client or add-on. And, finally, everyone would create a key, compare each others’ fingerprints, and send and open a few mails.

This approach might be effective for a few tech enthusiasts. But my experience is that it won’t even reach most of the people who perceive a clear and urgent need for this type of protection. And, as for the rest of the employees, they’ll be bored, but perhaps they’ll be happy to have had a few hours off to daydream.

An alternative that give users similar benefits, but with much less hassle, is a CA-based scheme. Using a CA shifts the burden of authenticating keys from individuals to a trusted third party. If everyone were to verify everyone else’s fingerprint in our 50 person organization, they’d each verify 49 fingerprints. That’s 1250 (= 50 * 49) verifications in all! If instead everyone relied on a CA, then an administrator would have to check the 50 fingerprints and install the CA certificate on 50 computers. That’s a lot less work for everyone involved.

Of course, in this scenario it is still necessary to have everyone create a key. But, this is a one-time procedure, which can be done as part of an on-boarding process. And, it is necessary for the administrator to maintain a directory (e.g., WKD or LDAP) and ensure that the users’ software is configured to use it. But none of those things require ongoing efforts from the end users.

If you’re a privacy activist, you’re possibly thinking: NO! I don’t want a CA! I’ve heard of how Symantec has repeatedly misissued certificates, and governments like Turkey have been caught forging certificates. The interests of these enormous CAs are not aligned with the interests of their users; they can’t be relied on!

And, that, folks, is exactly the problem that OpenPGP CA solves. Instead of using a third-party CA, OpenPGP CA makes it easy to run an in-house CA. Since a system administrator already typically has administrator rights on all of their users’ computers, the users only need to place marginally more trust in the system administrator. And the win is enormous: not only are users able to send encrypted emails to their co-workers, but the keys have actually been authenticated, which is an essential property of secure communication that is being increasingly overlooked in the age of Signal. And, OpenPGP CA achieves this using OpenPGP’s existing mechanisms. You can read more about OpenPGP CA in its extensive documentation.

Also, because OpenPGP CA makes it easy for organizations to sign each other’s CA keys and scope those certifications to just a single organization, it is easy for an administrator to ensure that their users are able to fully automatically authenticate keys for users at other organizations. Individuals can, of course, do the same.

A Few Details

OpenPGP CA works as follows. OpenPGP CA helps an administrator sign each user’s certificate, and publishes them in a WKD. The administrator can even sign certificates of other OpenPGP CA instances (thereby bridging groups), and third-party certificates. User’s that then set the CA to be a trusted introducer (in GnuPG terminology: they set the key’s ownertrust to “FULLY”, or tsign the CA’s key) will be able to authenticate many of their regular communication partners without any effort. This means that communication is not only much more likely to be encrypted, but the keys are actually authenticated.

Figure: Two OpenPGP-CA using organizations and various certifications that OpenPGP CA helps create. Using these certifications, Alice is able to authenticate a key for Bob.

The above figure shows two organizations, alpha.org and beta.org, who use OpenPGP CA, and various certifications, which OpenPGP CA helps create. In the figure, Alice (alice@alpha.org) has tsigned alpha.org’s CA certificate. alpha.org’s CA tsigned beta.org’s CA certificate and scoped the certification to beta.org. beta.org’s CA certified a certificate for bob@beta.org. Alice can use these certifications to certify the certificate for Bob (bob@beta.org). Note: if beta.org’s CA has certified a certificate for carol@gamma.org, Alice would not use that certification to certify a certificate for carol@gamma.org, because the trust signature that her CA made is scoped to beta.org. This is how it is possible to use an organization’s CA without fully trusting them.

OpenPGP CA is a tool for administrators. Since it manages sensitive data, it should be run in a well-protected environment. To further simplify deployment, OpenPGP CA also ships a REST daemon, which can easily be integrated into an existing intranet backend, or a web portal. In this case, a member of the organization authenticates their certificate to the administrator by proving they can login to the web portal and upload a certificate. OpenPGP CA then only certifies a User ID if it matches the user’s email address. This feature can also be used by a club to easily certify and distribute their members’ OpenPGP certificates.

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