This paper presents the results of a laboratory study involving Mailvelope, a modern PGP client that integrates tightly with existing webmail providers. In our study, we brought in pairs of participants and had them attempt to use Mailvelope to communicate with each other. Our results shown that more than a decade and a half after \textit{Why Johnny Can't Encrypt}, modern PGP tools are still unusable for the masses. We finish with a discussion of pain points encountered using Mailvelope, and discuss what might be done to address them in future PGP systems.
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> I'm using branle (https://branle.fiatjaf.com/) as my client and you can follow me with my pubkey: 22e804d26ed16b68db5259e78449e96dab5d464c8f470bda3eb1a70467f2c793.
It isn't too hard to improve upon the status quo in various ways when you just drop a key usability requirement (in this case, the need for human-memorable 'handles').
It is worth reading 'Why Johnny Can't Encrypt' (1999) [0], 'Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt' (2011) [1], and 'Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt' (2015) [2].
[0] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec99/full_papers/whitt...
[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.22...
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555
Related research:
* Why Johnny can't encrypt (1995): https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Why_Johnny_Ca...
* Why Johnny still can't encrypt (2006): https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/sheng-poster_abst...
* Why Johnny still, still can't encrypt (2016): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08555.pdf
At this point I really wonder if e-mail is the best solution for encrypted asynchronous communication. E2E systems like Signal or Whatsapp offer a very functional, intuitive way to protect your texts.
Finally a protocol layer that drags email screaming and kicking into the 21st century despite 40 years of unusable cryptography [0]?
[0] (Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08555.pdf
See "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt", 2005: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Why_Johnny_Can...
Also see "Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt", 2015: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.22...
Also see "Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt", 2016: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555
As an indication of the effect that the original 1999 paper has had on security research, and its legacy, let me also mention the paper "Why Johnny Still Can’t Encrypt" [1] from 2006, and the paper "Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt" [2] from 2015.
Perhaps in a few more years Johnny will finally be able to encrypt using email software that supports the emerging Autocrypt standard. [3]
[1] http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/sheng-poster_abstr...
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555
[3] https://autocrypt.org/
This is a famous one from 1999 - "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt" [1]
There's a couple of follow-ups too, such as "Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt" [2], and "Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt" [3].
[1] https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Why_Johnny_Ca...
[2] https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/sheng-poster_abst...
[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555
Put money toward an organization that will hire full-time UX designers and engineers who can make open-source encryption usable by the masses.
Why Johnny
Why Johnny Still, Still can't encypt [2015] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555
(The third edition corrects minor typos and adds 3 chapters synthesized from published papers plus an appendix on maximum entropy distributions.) The monograph investigates the misapplication of conventional statistical techniques to fat tailed distributions and looks for remedies, when possible.
I prove that if markets are weak-form efficient, meaning current prices fully reflect all information available in past prices, then P = NP, meaning every computational problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time can also be solved in polynomial time.