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PGP works on individual message level. If email encryption is ever to get ubiquitous it needs a more comprehensive approach. It should start with a local email

by deno 10y ago

PGP works on individual message level. If email encryption is ever to get ubiquitous it needs a more comprehensive approach. It should start with a local email server that keeps all messages in an encrypted vault and can communicate in a secure manner with other clients that implement the “secure delivery” protocol (which would be indicated by being able to securely resolve the public key of target email address, and from an UI perspective by a special “Secure Send” send button). Manual key management will never succeed. Key discovery needs to be aggressively opportunistic yet secure. It’s the only way to go.

NoGravitas 10y ago
Disclaimer: I'm only a consumer of cryptography, not a cryptographer. I have the feeling that secure email needs to be completely separate from SMTP; clients might be able to use both, in the same way that Signal will also use SMS when necessary. It should probably use a double-ratchet-based protocol, but cannot rely on centralization for contacts discovery and key exchange (because then it wouldn't be email-like). Among things that currently exist, it seems like the Matrix protocol[0] and OMEMO[1] seem basically suitable as a transport (both of them use the Olm protocol developed for Matrix, I believe). [0]: https://www.matrix.org/ https://www.matrix.org/ [1]: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html
- deno 10y ago
  You can absolutely replace SMTP but whatever you replace it with needs to be at least compatible with it. Lots of warnings, Insecure Email Ahead, but it needs to be compatible. I also don’t think email should be e2e by default. Next gen email will never get adopted if Gmail can’t index it. What you want is to give them the option of selling “Secure Cloud Email Vault.” Something that’s encrypted or partially encrypted (just body) on their servers, like Amazon is selling encryption for S3. But the protocol can also support fully local encrypted email (as detailed in my previous) for those that want that. Edit: Oh also for the actual cryptography there needs to be a way to give someone (like Court Order) decryption key to a single message. This avoids a lot of issues. Governments are not just going to let you deploy fully encrypted email by default.
  - confounded 10y ago
    > I also don’t think email should be e2e by default. Next gen email will never get adopted if Gmail can’t index it. Fallback is fine; in the age of "surveillance capitalism" security for the moderately interested is the best we can hope for. > Governments are not just going to let you deploy fully encrypted email by default. What do you base this on? What would they do?
    - deno 10y ago
      > What do you base this on? What would they do? PATRIOT Act Vol. 2. It’s the lizard people I’m worried about.
phicoh 10y ago
I'm very curious if you know a decentralised authentication mechanism that scales and works for e-mail. I don't know any. Without, improving over PGP is mostly wishful thinking.
- deno 10y ago
  As I said DNSCRYPT or Blockchains like Etherium/Namecoin. PGP’s WoT model is a complete failure.

by deno 10y ago

NoGravitas 10y ago

Disclaimer: I'm only a consumer of cryptography, not a cryptographer. I have the feeling that secure email needs to be completely separate from SMTP; clients might be able to use both, in the same way that Signal will also use SMS when necessary. It should probably use a double-ratchet-based protocol, but cannot rely on centralization for contacts discovery and key exchange (because then it wouldn't be email-like). Among things that currently exist, it seems like the Matrix protocol[0] and OMEMO[1] seem basically suitable as a transport (both of them use the Olm protocol developed for Matrix, I believe). [0]: https://www.matrix.org/ https://www.matrix.org/ [1]: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html

deno 10y ago
You can absolutely replace SMTP but whatever you replace it with needs to be at least compatible with it. Lots of warnings, Insecure Email Ahead, but it needs to be compatible. I also don’t think email should be e2e by default. Next gen email will never get adopted if Gmail can’t index it. What you want is to give them the option of selling “Secure Cloud Email Vault.” Something that’s encrypted or partially encrypted (just body) on their servers, like Amazon is selling encryption for S3. But the protocol can also support fully local encrypted email (as detailed in my previous) for those that want that. Edit: Oh also for the actual cryptography there needs to be a way to give someone (like Court Order) decryption key to a single message. This avoids a lot of issues. Governments are not just going to let you deploy fully encrypted email by default.
- confounded 10y ago
  > I also don’t think email should be e2e by default. Next gen email will never get adopted if Gmail can’t index it. Fallback is fine; in the age of "surveillance capitalism" security for the moderately interested is the best we can hope for. > Governments are not just going to let you deploy fully encrypted email by default. What do you base this on? What would they do?
  - deno 10y ago
    > What do you base this on? What would they do? PATRIOT Act Vol. 2. It’s the lizard people I’m worried about.

phicoh 10y ago

I'm very curious if you know a decentralised authentication mechanism that scales and works for e-mail. I don't know any. Without, improving over PGP is mostly wishful thinking.

deno 10y ago
As I said DNSCRYPT or Blockchains like Etherium/Namecoin. PGP’s WoT model is a complete failure.