4 ms·

> not to use HTML emails, which seems unlikely in practice In a context where pgp is used, which is not me receiving promotional material or forwards from Gran

by klez 8y ago

> not to use HTML emails, which seems unlikely in practice In a context where pgp is used, which is not me receiving promotional material or forwards from Grandma, why do you consider it unlikely that mail is to be sent as plaintext and not as html?

deong 8y ago
Almost every email client defaults to HTML. There are going to be people using both encryption and HTML.
- e12e 8y ago
  The idea that you can combine full hypertext and security is absurd. IMNHO this is the most significant problem with email (and many "secure" messaging stacks that allow "rich content"). Sure, it's possible to define a secure subset of html (basically bold/italics/underline, tables and headers). But everyone adds transclusion (in-line rendering of linked content, which leaks data and opens up the door to bugs), fonts (ie: programs), images (historically not a great idea), and some even Javascript! And that's not even all the muas that runs in the browser, and try to expose some safe subset of itself to be used for rendering the mail body. So, html Email is insecure, when contrasted with plain text email. Using pgp as "code signing" for hypertext applications ("html emails") isn't nearly enough. Sadly, afaik there's no agreed "safe" rich text format for mail. Absurdly rtf would probably be better than html mail. Anyway, I don't see how anyone could expect html mail to be safe in the first place.
Xylakant 8y ago
Afaics the attacker gets to pick the format.
- klez 8y ago
  I'll rephrase what I was trying to say: If I'm expecting encrypted email, I don't expect it formatted as HTML, so I can just disable its rendering. At which point the attacker can send it any format they want, my mail client just won't render it. The parent to my comment says this is unlikely, and I don't understand why. Hence my asking (and now I see I phrased it the opposite way).
  - CJefferson 8y ago
    The problem is this seems like fragile security -- most mail clients do render HTML, so better make sure that option never gets set to on, or you are hosed.

by klez 8y ago

deong 8y ago

Almost every email client defaults to HTML. There are going to be people using both encryption and HTML.

e12e 8y ago
The idea that you can combine full hypertext and security is absurd. IMNHO this is the most significant problem with email (and many "secure" messaging stacks that allow "rich content"). Sure, it's possible to define a secure subset of html (basically bold/italics/underline, tables and headers). But everyone adds transclusion (in-line rendering of linked content, which leaks data and opens up the door to bugs), fonts (ie: programs), images (historically not a great idea), and some even Javascript! And that's not even all the muas that runs in the browser, and try to expose some safe subset of itself to be used for rendering the mail body. So, html Email is insecure, when contrasted with plain text email. Using pgp as "code signing" for hypertext applications ("html emails") isn't nearly enough. Sadly, afaik there's no agreed "safe" rich text format for mail. Absurdly rtf would probably be better than html mail. Anyway, I don't see how anyone could expect html mail to be safe in the first place.

Xylakant 8y ago

Afaics the attacker gets to pick the format.

klez 8y ago
I'll rephrase what I was trying to say: If I'm expecting encrypted email, I don't expect it formatted as HTML, so I can just disable its rendering. At which point the attacker can send it any format they want, my mail client just won't render it. The parent to my comment says this is unlikely, and I don't understand why. Hence my asking (and now I see I phrased it the opposite way).
- CJefferson 8y ago
  The problem is this seems like fragile security -- most mail clients do render HTML, so better make sure that option never gets set to on, or you are hosed.