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Unfortunately, Signal is not decentralized or federated (for good reasons[1]). Email is. This is an important feature for those of us who worry about the growin

by aftbit 9y ago

Unfortunately, Signal is not decentralized or federated (for good reasons[1]). Email is. This is an important feature for those of us who worry about the growing centralization of the web, as well as the very many users who still mainly use email for communication. When you leave a job, you may not keep your email address, but at least you can still communicate with people across organizational boundaries. Anyway, even if email security cannot be perfect, I agree with the sentiment behind RFC 7435[2] - some protection is better than nothing. If anything, I feel that they didn't go far enough in this compromise. Most people interact with their email through the provider's webmail client. Autocrypt is fundamentally incompatible with this[3]. This means that it will really not be useful for the majority of users. 1: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ 2: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7435.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7435.html 3: https://autocrypt.org/level1.html#requirements-on-mua-e-mail-provider-interactions https://autocrypt.org/level1.html#requirements-on-mua-e-mail...

Valodim 9y ago
Webmail is indeed a very tricky one. Mailvelope does a fairly good job, but without some provider support that allows setting/reading headers and sending custom mime parts, there is sadly no good way to solve this problem.
rollcat 9y ago
> Anyway, even if email security cannot be perfect, I agree with the sentiment behind RFC 7435[2] - some protection is better than nothing. Opportunistic encryption (or any kind of negotiable security) is prone to downgrades by a MITM. Either both sides require strong security, or you must assume lowest common denominator. While I have your attention, please do yourself a favor and pin some strong, modern ciphers for your SSH client: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/OpenSSH#Modern https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/OpenSSH#Modern
tptacek 9y ago
To a pretty good first approximation zero percent of messaging users care about federation. It's clear to me why "don't bother encrypting email" upsets nerds on message boards. But if you're going to trade getting the maximum number of messages safely encrypted for a deeply uncertain future in which most email is somehow reliably encrypted, you have priorities other than end-user safety --- and, I would argue (but do accept that I can't do so conclusively) priorities other than security engineering.

by aftbit 9y ago

Valodim 9y ago

Webmail is indeed a very tricky one. Mailvelope does a fairly good job, but without some provider support that allows setting/reading headers and sending custom mime parts, there is sadly no good way to solve this problem.

rollcat 9y ago

> Anyway, even if email security cannot be perfect, I agree with the sentiment behind RFC 7435[2] - some protection is better than nothing. Opportunistic encryption (or any kind of negotiable security) is prone to downgrades by a MITM. Either both sides require strong security, or you must assume lowest common denominator. While I have your attention, please do yourself a favor and pin some strong, modern ciphers for your SSH client: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/OpenSSH#Modern https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/OpenSSH#Modern

tptacek 9y ago

To a pretty good first approximation zero percent of messaging users care about federation. It's clear to me why "don't bother encrypting email" upsets nerds on message boards. But if you're going to trade getting the maximum number of messages safely encrypted for a deeply uncertain future in which most email is somehow reliably encrypted, you have priorities other than end-user safety --- and, I would argue (but do accept that I can't do so conclusively) priorities other than security engineering.