Monthly Archives: February 2008

Trying to Clean Up / Delete PGP Keys.

Here’s the story, moons ago when I started in security somebody told me all about Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) in my enthusiasm I got straight on to downloading a copy; now this was a long time ago and I can’t remember if it was freeware or a trial from pgp.com, but either way I got straight onto generating a public/private key pair.

Since I was still on new technology enthusiasm I made sure that my private key had a very, very strong password, all happy with my success I then try to encrypt a file to myself only to find I could not open the encrypted file. After a few trys of drying to decrypt the file I give up and decide that I must have “typo’d” the password when generating the key, no matter, I simply delete the key pair and start again. For a second time I use a very, very strong password for key generation and encrypt a file, sadly the same thing happens, I just cannot decrypt the files. For the third key I use something new, still a strong password but now 10char instead of the 50 (yes it was a sentence) I used before.

All is fine until I then start sending emails to my colleagues whom inform me that there 4 keys on the web – DOH! It appears that my client at the time was set to automagically sync it’s keys with the server and has published my rubbish keys to the internet!

But the story of key woe doesn’t end there, by a strange course of coincidence a week before I was due to leave that company my laptop hard-drive burnt out taking my private keys with it, so now there are 4 keys on the internet (with two different e-mail addresses) which I cannot revoke.

At the time I remember finding this faq which basically says if you’ve published a public key and lost the private – Tough! As such these keys have ever since layed unused on their server, you would think that they would automatically clear down keys that clients never request…. oh well!

I’ve started using PGP at work again and wanted to somehow clear up the mess I created all them years ago. The “you can’t delete” still stands but I found this useful article which explains something you can do. If you generate new key-pairs sign the old public keys, and revoke your new key you can “show to the world” that you know that key and since you’ve revoked yours it probably can’t be trusted. So that’s what I’ve tried to do, the whole PGP key managment thing is still a bit of a mine-field but, if you search for me hopefully what I’ve achieved is…

PGP Key 895C5474 belongs to me (I just generated it) I have signed my mistakes, Keys 165E3E9, 884FA434 & 17A50106 and revoked 895C5474.
PGP Key B9E407B7 also is a new one of mine, I have signed 825E0D45 and revoked B9E407B7.

The other key AC4DA9FA is my new work key and is still valid.

My personal public key has not been published (yet) but is available here.

Fingers crossed I’ve taken enough precautions (backing up keys and passwords in separate secure locations) that this will never happen again, but I guess only time will tell, we all make mistakes :)

Talking to me, GoogleTalk & MSN

I’ve tried this before and binned it due to the mess MSN creates on your googletalk contact list, but here I am again re-connecting my MSN Buddies to GoogleTalk…

Connect Google Talk to AIM, MSN, & Yahoo – BigBlueBall Forums
Now that Google has opened up their Google Talk servers for federation with other Jabber servers, you can use Google Talk to connect to your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo or ICQ.

I don’t like MSN, the client is clunky, full of adverts communication is insecure, blah blah blah; so I stopped using it daily (i.e. singing automatically) a couple of years back, but my stubbornness of asking my friends to switch to googletalk or skype has only back-fired, in some cases I have even lost touch with people, this is complete madness since some my “buddies” even have gmail e-mail accounts!

I really wish that MSN,AIM,ICQ,GoogleTalk and everything else would implement a “gateway to gateway” standard, the idea of having to create gmail accounts or hotmail accounts to send e-mails to specific buddies is considered madness so why isn’t there an implemented “SMTP” for chat, google have obviously started the ball rolling by using XAMPP as their standard but why won’t the others play ball?? Come on guys sort it out!!!!!

I’m not sure I like green!

I’m proper into the 24hr wallpapers I have around me at the moment, fedora’s infinity 24 changes whilst I’m at work and the PS3 XMB changes whilst I play.

The thing is my ps3 wallpaper has changed from yellow to green, now this wouldn’t normally be an issue as most gameplay happens in the evening and the screen changes to black by then, but looking at the wikipedia page for the XMB I’m in for some pinks & greens in the next couple of months…. not to my taste at all, it’s a shame that Sony don’t let you choose which colours the XMB scrolls through… ho-hum it was nice whilst it lasted, I wonder if I can find any cool animated wallpapers for my PS3? :?

Twittering with Tools

LINICKX.com is evolving, I’m not sure how yet but I’ve started by introducing twitter tools, google has changed the face of websites, according to google analytics my home page is not longer the top landing page, i.e. most people visiting my site hit the content they want directly and don’t need to navigate through the site… with this in mind I’m thinking about turning linickx.com into a tumblr type thing… twitter tools allows me to post short “thoughts” and “comments” without having to go through the full WordPress write post thing.

I started the idea along time ago when photomatt introduced asides, i.e. I’ve always had categories and different front page presentation styles for blog posts, firefox posts, delicious posts and then everything else… so I’m thinking about taking the idea further by creating individual posts,feeds and styles for delicious links and rss shared items (from google reader).

Since I want to keep my feed clean (it’s imported into many social networks like mugshot & facebook) I’ve used this post to filter out my new “sync” category… sync as in I’m synchronising my web life with my website :) – Oh Yeah before I foget don’t add the code to functions.php as it creates a php warning, create a wordpress plugin.

My web/work/social life is quite busy – who’s isn’t!… so I’m a little worried about how to style the whole thing I found a nice way of quote text with css, so the tweets look good, but I’m worried that bookmarks and shared posts could make the site look cluttered or confusing, I’ve already had to add a “twitter reply” link to each post since the 1st thing people have asked me is what’s twitter.. doh must be a UK web-ignorance thing.

I guess we’ll just see how this pan’s out, I’ve just renewed this domain, so it’d be nice to finish for the domains birthday :D

Firefox Add-on: Remember The Milk for Gmail

I’ve been playing with Remember the milk for some time now, I thought with my n800 it would be really useful…BUT… Actually I’ve found that the firefox extension they have released has really upped my usage, as soon as I can get my tasks synced with my n800 I’ll definitively be upgrading to their pro version.

I’ve recommended this plugin to a few friends and they love it, so if you’re looking for a new personal task managment solution then this is for you!

Remember The Milk – Services / Remember The Milk for Gmail
Remember The Milk for Gmail is a Firefox extension that allows you to manage your tasks in Gmail (complete, postpone, and edit tasks), add new tasks (and connect them with your emails, contacts, and Google Calendar events), automatically add tasks for starred messages or specific labels, and much more!

My firefox page is now back online, so check it out for a list of other useful plugins/addons.