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This all day. I don't get why you'd take time out of your day to write "Stop Using Encrypted Email" instead of "Can Encrypted Email Be Done Right?" unless the a
by jrm4 5y ago
This all day. I don't get why you'd take time out of your day to write "Stop Using Encrypted Email" instead of "Can Encrypted Email Be Done Right?" unless the answer is provable and obvious no.
- lamontcg 5y agoThe author is arguing that it cannot ever be done right. Hasn't been fixed in 25 years and has fairly unfixable downgrade-to-plaintext attacks. You could enforce encrypted communications in the protocol by changing it, but you'd need to block downgrade-to-plaintext in the process, which would remove backwards compatibility and what you've got is something that looks like e-mail but is incompatible with the entire rest of the existing e-mail system and you've forked the whole ecosystem anyway. Might as well just write a better protocol and app while you're at it.
- sneak 5y agoUnauthenticated TLS has trivial downgrade to plaintext attacks too, but it's still better than unencrypted HTTP because it upgrades the necessity for a passive attack into an active one.
- tooltower 5y agoIt is? I thought HSTS headers did a pretty good job of preventing downgrades, at least for sites I frequently visit.
- tptacek 5y agoYou've smuggled "unauthenticated" in there to make a reference to a mode of deployment that nobody thinks is secure. "Real" TLS (the alternative) doesn't have trivial downgrade attacks.
- sneak 5y agoI mean --no-check-certificate. It's still better than http:. Eavesdropping requires an active attack instead of simply a passive one.