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Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, and it is supposedly a software related to cryptography. Has it been audited at least? They are promoting it so much, but GnuPG has been around for a while now and loads of people have used it. What about Age? I feel more comfortable with GnuPG.

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What is your bar for "audited"?

I've reviewed both the design and implementation for age in the past and only found nitpicky things to improve (mostly related to HKDF).

I can take a fresh look and make a pretty PDF on paragonie.com if you care so much.

I am sure audits could help Age either way. :) I am just saying that it is still fresh as opposed to GnuPG. This is what people typically call "battle-tested", when the software has been used by a zillion of people for some time. Of course I cannot speak about Age much, this is the first time I heard about it.

GnuPG had been battle tested for almost two decades before Efail was discovered and disclosed.

Yeah, but does this help Age?

Only to the extent that it shows you can't simply compare the vintage of two systems and declare the older one safer by dint of battle-testing.

I am not saying it is safer because it is older, but it sure has been under more scrutiny than Age. That said, Age might be safer regardless.

Can you describe the upside of this “more scrutiny”, since per the above it doesn’t seem to have made the codebase safer?

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