4 ms·

NSA-proof this is certainly not. It might complicate reading your messages in transit, just a bit, but that's about it. E-mail messages leak metadata all over

by daenney 11y ago

NSA-proof this is certainly not. It might complicate reading your messages in transit, just a bit, but that's about it. E-mail messages leak metadata all over the place. Though according to the author 1/3 of their email volume is to parties that support TLS, that still leaves 2/3rds up for grabs. If you happen to send a message to two people, one who's e-mail provider supports TLS and one who doesn't you're toast too. There is no mention of encrypting your messages using GPG or any other tool. Though they do seem to use EncFS for the email database, then there's the RAM to worry about, CryptKeeper could be interesting (or OpenBSD's encrypted virtual memory), your CPU and a bajillion other components both hardware and software. Then there's passages like this: > For security reasons, I’m not going to disclose the measures that I take to avoid others gaining root on my system. If that's your security model... There are still myriads of exploits that would allow you to gain access to a machine, and as a consequence read the data, which really shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of the NSA if they really wanted to.

Terretta 11y ago
I agree, this essentially cancels out the entire premise: > For security reasons, I’m not going to disclose the measures that I take to avoid others gaining root on my system. A good start might be changing your root password, or keeping your mail server under your pillow at night.
- nanna 11y ago
  Lets not forget the context of this. This was posted one month after the initial Snowden revelations and the problem it was trying to fix was that all the major email providers had known backdoors to the the Five Eyes. 'NSA-Proofing' in this context meant running your own email server which was not known to be backdoored. Granted, its title is hyperbolic, but providing a way to get rid of a known vulnerability in the email chain in a reasonable amount of time (definitely not two hours though) was (and perhaps remains) a reasonable security measure. Original HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045194

by daenney 11y ago

Terretta 11y ago

I agree, this essentially cancels out the entire premise: > For security reasons, I’m not going to disclose the measures that I take to avoid others gaining root on my system. A good start might be changing your root password, or keeping your mail server under your pillow at night.

nanna 11y ago
Lets not forget the context of this. This was posted one month after the initial Snowden revelations and the problem it was trying to fix was that all the major email providers had known backdoors to the the Five Eyes. 'NSA-Proofing' in this context meant running your own email server which was not known to be backdoored. Granted, its title is hyperbolic, but providing a way to get rid of a known vulnerability in the email chain in a reasonable amount of time (definitely not two hours though) was (and perhaps remains) a reasonable security measure. Original HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045194