2 ms·

It is true that people should not email that kind of data but then we assume good op security. Failure of op security is one of the argument of the author here

by belorn 7y ago

It is true that people should not email that kind of data but then we assume good op security. Failure of op security is one of the argument of the author here against encryption. On that note I agree with him. People op security is bad, thus they should not use a third party service provider where the line between legal and illegal is the wrong attachment. Enterprise Gmail is able to operate as a data processor, but there is a lot of fine details in order to stay within the law. It assumes that the company has agreed to the gmail processing terms and gotten permission from their own customer to process the data in such ways. Again here we hope that op security match the fine line between legal and illegal. (If we want a practical example which I know people do, imagine a administrator of a CRM sending a copy of the database to a new hosting provider. Now a copy of the database exist in the sent folder and an other copy at the email provider that the hosting company use. It is very doubtful that GDPR allows that kind of sharing of the private information. If the file get leaked in a data breach there is high probability of a successful lawsuit for mishandling of the information). Using your own email server or tools that automatically encrypt everything does however prevent those risks.

joshuamorton 7y ago
What email server do you use that automatically end to end encrypts everything using pgp? It sounds like you're talking about encryption at rest, in which case Gmail does that already, more securely than whatever you're doing so the backwards approach to compliance is more effort and less secure in practice.
- belorn 7y ago
  > What email server do you use that automatically end to end encrypts everything using pgp? I wrote a program to do that, but there is also a package in Debian if I recall right that also do it. On the mail server it looks up keys in DNS and if it founds it, automatically encrypts outgoing email. > talking about encryption at rest, in which case Gmail does that already Emails at google is not encrypted. Good must have access to the plain text in order to do analytics and search. If google has a data breach it can include every single email gmail has in plain text, and that is a fundamental risk. > more securely than whatever you're doing That is kind of impolite to make assumption about my own setup. It is also wrong.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > On the mail server it looks up keys in DNS and if it founds it, automatically encrypts outgoing email. So you're not talking about pgp/e2ee, you're talking about, like, SMIME or something. > Emails at google is not encrypted. They're at least as encrypted as they are on your server from what you've told me. > That is kind of impolite to make assumption about my own setup. Given that you don't seem to understand the difference between end to end encryption, in transit encryption, and encryption at rest, I'm going to say that no, I'm very confident that you haven't done this correctly. > It is also wrong. And that therefore no, gmail and Outlook are both more secure than your email server.
    - belorn 7y ago
      I wish more people would study IT security since a lot of this kind of silly discussions are cleared up during the first lecture. Basic 101 security. In order to calculate risk you take the risk threats minus risk mitigation. The bigger the threat, or the fewer the risk mitigations are, the bigger the risk. You might have forgotten that in 2010 there was this data leak called cablegate. NSA lost 251,287 diplomatic messages. NSA did store them on an encrypted server, and used transit encryption, and yet the data leaked. A major risk to data security is access, and in that case an administrator with access leaked it. With my mail server, that administrator is me. One of the larger benefits of personal servers. When you compare Gmail and my mails server then you include social risk just as much as technical risk. You compare the physical risk, that is servers located in multiple places on the earth. You compare the political risk of a single entity that control 80% of the world email with a private email address used by one person. you compare targeted attacks with passive and optimistic attacks. Lets put money where out mouths are. Want to bet that google will have a new data leak before I do? Looks like a very lucrative bet to me. In 2018 Google had a data breach. five million user's data was compromised. In 2018 I had zero data breaches in any of my servers. Zero users data was compromised. I have been running my own server for almost 20 years and not a single bit has been lost. Have I Been Pwned? has billions of leaked accounts, not a single which belongs to me. What about you? > So you're not talking about pgp/e2ee, you're talking about, like, SMIME or something. No. There are RFC for email security written in this century. The adaption of putting pgp keys in dns is not great however which is why personal email servers is currently better, but both solution works fine either way as long both side of the conversation does it.

by belorn 7y ago

joshuamorton 7y ago

What email server do you use that automatically end to end encrypts everything using pgp? It sounds like you're talking about encryption at rest, in which case Gmail does that already, more securely than whatever you're doing so the backwards approach to compliance is more effort and less secure in practice.

belorn 7y ago
> What email server do you use that automatically end to end encrypts everything using pgp? I wrote a program to do that, but there is also a package in Debian if I recall right that also do it. On the mail server it looks up keys in DNS and if it founds it, automatically encrypts outgoing email. > talking about encryption at rest, in which case Gmail does that already Emails at google is not encrypted. Good must have access to the plain text in order to do analytics and search. If google has a data breach it can include every single email gmail has in plain text, and that is a fundamental risk. > more securely than whatever you're doing That is kind of impolite to make assumption about my own setup. It is also wrong.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > On the mail server it looks up keys in DNS and if it founds it, automatically encrypts outgoing email. So you're not talking about pgp/e2ee, you're talking about, like, SMIME or something. > Emails at google is not encrypted. They're at least as encrypted as they are on your server from what you've told me. > That is kind of impolite to make assumption about my own setup. Given that you don't seem to understand the difference between end to end encryption, in transit encryption, and encryption at rest, I'm going to say that no, I'm very confident that you haven't done this correctly. > It is also wrong. And that therefore no, gmail and Outlook are both more secure than your email server.
  - belorn 7y ago
    I wish more people would study IT security since a lot of this kind of silly discussions are cleared up during the first lecture. Basic 101 security. In order to calculate risk you take the risk threats minus risk mitigation. The bigger the threat, or the fewer the risk mitigations are, the bigger the risk. You might have forgotten that in 2010 there was this data leak called cablegate. NSA lost 251,287 diplomatic messages. NSA did store them on an encrypted server, and used transit encryption, and yet the data leaked. A major risk to data security is access, and in that case an administrator with access leaked it. With my mail server, that administrator is me. One of the larger benefits of personal servers. When you compare Gmail and my mails server then you include social risk just as much as technical risk. You compare the physical risk, that is servers located in multiple places on the earth. You compare the political risk of a single entity that control 80% of the world email with a private email address used by one person. you compare targeted attacks with passive and optimistic attacks. Lets put money where out mouths are. Want to bet that google will have a new data leak before I do? Looks like a very lucrative bet to me. In 2018 Google had a data breach. five million user's data was compromised. In 2018 I had zero data breaches in any of my servers. Zero users data was compromised. I have been running my own server for almost 20 years and not a single bit has been lost. Have I Been Pwned? has billions of leaked accounts, not a single which belongs to me. What about you? > So you're not talking about pgp/e2ee, you're talking about, like, SMIME or something. No. There are RFC for email security written in this century. The adaption of putting pgp keys in dns is not great however which is why personal email servers is currently better, but both solution works fine either way as long both side of the conversation does it.