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56 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
56 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
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SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021 Paul Schaub <vanitasvitae@fsfe.org>
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SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
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-->
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# PGPainless-Core
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[](https://javadoc.io/doc/org.pgpainless/pgpainless-core)
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[](https://search.maven.org/artifact/org.pgpainless/pgpainless-core)
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Wrapper around Bouncy Castle's OpenPGP implementation.
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## Protection Against Attacks
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PGPainless aims to fulfill the primary goals of cryptography:
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* Confidentiality through message encryption
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* Authenticity through signatures
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* Integrity through the use of Modification Detection Code and again signatures
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In short: Communication protected using PGPainless is intended to be private,
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users can verify that messages they receive were really send by their communication peer
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and users can verify that messages have not been tampered with.
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This is being achieved by preventing a number of typical attacks on the user's communication,
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like the attacker introducing an evil subkey to the victims public key, or the attacker creating
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counterfeit signatures to fool the victim.
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Due to its nature as a library however, it does not make sense to set up defences against all possible
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attack types (see below).
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So here is a threat model that best applies to PGPainless.
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### Threat Model
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A threat model that makes the most sense for PGPainless would be an evil attacker using PGPainless
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through a benign client application (like an email app) on a trustworthy device.
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The attacker can try to feed the application malicious input (like manipulated public key updates,
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specially crafted PGP message objects etc.) but they cannot access the victims decrypted secret key material as
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it is protected by the device (e.g. stored in a secure key store).
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### What doesn't PGPainless Protect Against?
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#### Brute Force Attacks
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It was decided that protection against brute force attacks on passwords used in symmetric encryption
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(password encrypted messages/keys) are out of scope for PGPainless.
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PGPainless cannot limit access to the ciphertext that is being brute forced, as that is provided by
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the application that uses PGPainless.
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Therefore, protection against brute force attacks must be employed by the application itself.
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#### (Public) Key Modification Attacks
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As a library, PGPainless cannot protect against swapped out public keys.
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It is therefore responsibility of the consumer to ensure that an attacker on the same system cannot tamper with stored keys.
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It is highly advised to store both secret and public keys in a secure key storage which protects against modifications.
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Furthermore, PGPainless cannot verify key authenticity, so it is up to the application that uses PGPainless to check,
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if a key really belongs to a certain user.
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