Friendly distribution and management of PGP public keys via Facebook

Overview

The PGfb project started at InfoCamp Berkeley '11 to create a client side solution for encrypted communication on Facebook; at the WSJ Data Transparency hackathon (April 2012) it was continued as a project for PGP key distribution via Facebook profiles and other social networks.

PGfb consists of a Facebook application and a Chrome Extension. It uses the Javascript OpenPGP implementation by Herbert Hanewinkel and stores public keys as part of users' Facebook profile, based on the Social Keys concept described in Location Privacy via Private Proximity Testing and SocialKeys: Transparent Cryptography via Key Distribution over Social Networks.

Current Goals

• Implement PGP encryption and decryption, and get it working in the Chrome Extension.

• Create a Chrome extension that uses the Facebook Javascript SDK to add and find public keys.

• Save private key on the local machine (localStorage? direct to a file?). Send backup to the user as email, or just Copy+Paste.

• ...

Screenshots

Extension automatically highlights public key links visible on Facebook profiles.

The extension's own UI helps with submitting your public key to a keyserver.