## Background

A few years ago, I started learning about the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) security model. Essentially, it is a
collection of tools that allow you to encrypt, sign, and authenticate using cryptographic technologies.
Common uses include signing Git commits and tags, sending encrypted emails, publishing signed messages, and more.
I was really into online privacy at the time, so I thought this was something I should learn more about.
The whole idea is that an individual has two types of keys: public and private. The public key can
and should be shared with the rest of the world. It is your identifier. Private keys are, like the name suggests, private.
Messages are encrypted with your public key and decrypted with your private key. Everyone has a master key. Some individuals
choose to allow their master key to also serve as Authentication, Signing, and Encryption keys, but this is generally
considered insecure. The most important job of the master key, however, is creating subkeys and revocation certificates.
Subkeys can be assigned any combination of Authentication, Signing, or Encryption roles. Revocation certificates allow you
to permanently proclaim that your key is no longer in use and disable it. This can be done for a number of reasons like
having your private key compromised, but also for more benign reasons like you wanted to upgrade to the newest
cryptographic algorithm. The most common practice is to create the master key so that it only has the ability to
create new subkeys, and disallow it from Encrypting, Signing, or Authenticating, leaving that up to three individual subkeys.
There are also identities. Multiple identities (a name and email address, with an optional comment) can be stored in a single key.

A graphic may help us understand this. As you can see below, this is my current master key with a C. Below it are three subkeys
each with a capability (S, E, or A). My identity is also there. Don't be intimidated by those strings of hexadecimal characters.
Those are just the key IDs.

![My subkeys](/blogimages/keyoutput.png)

I immediately wanted to make my own keys. So I did. I followed [Dr. Duh's guide](https://github.com/drduh/YubiKey-Guide/tree/84c9d9654d73ad679aa8554b0819f93f397c61a8), which I highly recommend.
Unfortunately, I was a little bit overzealous when I did this. Like I mentioned earlier, it is generally considered a good practice
to create subkeys for each of the capabilities (S, E, or A). I decided I wanted a separate set of subkeys for each of my devices.
This led to me creating **nine** subkeys. I did not realize it at the time, but they would not play nice with each other.
Also, it was just ugly. Each time I listed my keys to use them or share them, all nine subkeys would appear. I also created three
identities, one for each of my email addresses. Finally, I put comments in my identities, a practice that is [generally frowned upon.](https://web.archive.org/web/20160306174622/https://debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/97)
Afterwards, a few of my close friends and I signed each other's keys, verifying that their identities matched their keys. This
creates the "Web-of-Trust" that PGP is famous for.

One feature of PGP that I have not mentioned yet is its permanence. Once a key is uploaded to the internet, like most things, it is
there **forever**. While you can request that keyservers delete your key, they are not obligated to honor that request and it is
likely that thousands of other people around the world already have downloaded a copy. However, it is possible to revoke a key,
declaring to everyone that it should no longer be used. Because of this, I was hesitant to stop using this key.
For the past four years, I have used my original key, 0xF93DDAFA26EF2458, despite the multiple identities and excessive number of keys.
But today, I revoked my old one and created a new one.

## The New Key, 0x34C04305D581DBF

Armed with experience and a bit more knowledge, I created a new key with ID 0x34C04305D581DBF. A few paragraphs ago I briefly
mentioned signatures. In order to verify that this new key belongs to me and it is not someone masquerading as me, I signed
my new key with my old one. As you can see below, my new key is signed by itself (standard practice) as well as signed by
my old key. Immediately after, I sent the revocation of my old key to the keyservers. Therefore, if you trusted my old key
then you should trust my new one.

![Signatures on new key](/blogimages/keysignatures.png)

Another change I made was which algorithm I used. When I made my original key in 2020, it utilized RSA4096. It takes advantage
of some properties of prime numbers which make it very secure. However, for my new key, I chose to use ed25519, an algorithm
that uses elliptic curve cryptography. While my understanding on this topic is limited, ed25519 is just as secure as RSA4096,
but much faster and has shorter keys.

That being said, if you used my old key and have it in your keyring, please remove it and updated it with my current one
with fingerprint 2E51 F618 39D1 FA94 7A73  00C2 34C0 4305 D581 DBFE.


GPG Key Fun

## Hello World! How does this site work?

This is my blog, which features some pretty cool stuff. For example, code highlighting, quote changers, and an about page.

Code highlighting!
<SyntaxHighlighter language="javascript">
{`
const doStuff = () => {
	return console.log('hey');
}
`}
</SyntaxHighlighter>

It is built on NextJS, React, and Express (although not much express is used.). I also use some pretty cool smaller libraries for various different functionalities.

Blog posts are written in MDX.

Additionally, the cool quote changer on the main page is powered by an [API](https://github.com/ethancedwards8/ethancedwards-quotes/) that I wrote! Powered by Python and Flask.

Although at the time of writing, the site may not be the prettiest, I am confident that it will look good in enough time.

You can view the site source code on [GitHub](https://github.com/ethancedwards8/ethancedwards.com), feel free to submit pull requests if you see anything you can improve on!

## A bit about me

Right now, I am a full time student, working concurrently on both my high school and college degrees. Despite being a student, I do work as consulting and engineering for various small businesses around me. I also write for [StorageReview](https://storagereview.com) occasionally. I have been using Linux full time since 7th grade, and my current distro of choice is [Arch Linux](https://archlinux.org) with LVM on LUKS. My daily driver is a FrameWork laptop, and I have a desktop computer with a Ryzen 2600X alongside 16G of RAM. These machines however are dwarfed in power by my homelab, which consists of a cluster of Raspberry Pis ;). My homelab is currently hosting my site, but it may move locations in the future, but that's for another post.

I also have hobbies outside of tech. I am a cuber, reader, language learner, and mathematics lover. I am teaching myself Spanish through [Refold](https://refold.la), of which I am a huge proponent. This topic also deserves its own post. I plan on writing here a lot, although, everyone says that.

I am also super excited to talk about the books I am reading. I mostly read fiction, primarily Sci-Fi and Fantasy. But I also read lots of non-fiction, ranging from the history of an obscure religion to how electronics work. I love learning and I will read anything that you put in front of me.

## Bye!

This is the end of my first blog post, I hope you enjoyed reading it.


List of posts:

GPG Key Fun

Ethan Carter Edwards

December 15, 2024

First Post

Ethan Carter Edwards

June 27, 2022