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ProtonMail Is Inherently Insecure, Your Emails Are Likely Compromised (2021)

• mLuby 5y ago
  [Site says "Don't let Big Tech keep you in the dark" followed by a Google captcha.](https://ibb.co/0tpf982 https://ibb.co/0tpf982)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • gtsop 5y ago
    This! I didn't even have thr chance to read the full article. I am never solving a google captcha again on my non-work devices. It's a lost cause, I can't pass.
• decebalus1 5y ago
  > February 17, 2021
• alfalfasprout 5y ago
  What's the best alternative right now for secure web based email?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • darig 5y ago
  • winstonschmidt 5y ago
    I've been quite happy with tutanota since a couple of years.
  • ransom1538 5y ago
    "Aside from this, I also write daily at neo-network, which is a Telegram content channel I created to spread awareness of issues on technology, privacy and security. More importantly, it shares new revolutionary technologies, and educates readers on using them to break out of the web of control, creating a neo-network in its place." Well the author of this has a Telegram content channel.
  • boredpudding 5y ago
    Anything in this article that applies to ProtonMail applies to any encrypted web based email service. There's a limit in how much you can trust ProtonMail. If there's a website where you login and you see your email, there's always a way for that website to get access to the content of their own website.
  • yanmaani 5y ago
    There's no such thing as secure web-based e-mail, because web-based e-mail has the flaws outlined in the article. Try running Thunderbird or a similar client locally, and use PGP (ugh) or something similar to encrypt messages. (Theoretically, you can also use PGP with webmail, and it's secure, but extremely unpleasant.)
  • ElectronBadger 5y ago
    https://tutanota.com/ https://tutanota.com/
• kevinh 5y ago
  I'd take with a grain of salt any information from a website that claims that invoking satanic imagery will cause it to be manifested into reality: https://theconsciousresistance.com/on-lil-nas-x-satanism-and-the-reality-of-manifestation/ https://theconsciousresistance.com/on-lil-nas-x-satanism-and...
  • thesuitonym 5y ago
    Yikes! Nonetheless, their fist point is accurate: >...if you’ve used the Webmail client, ProtonMail has always had the ability to grab your password and private encryption key without you knowing, giving them backdated access to your emails. If the keys are stored on the same server as your encrypted data, your data might as well be unencrypted.
    • WithinReason 5y ago
      Why would the server store your keys?
      • seanw444 5y ago
        That's the question, isn't it?
  • rambojazz 5y ago
    Their logos are also always a good giveaway of what type of BS I'm getting into.
• mccorrinall 5y ago
  > If PM decides to act maliciously, they can do so undetected. Unlike the mobile application who’s binaries get cryptographically signed to match the official codebase, there is no method to verify a web application. Because everyone uses reproducible builds and verifies them for every automatic app update, right? > Although they do use the same client side OpenPGP library maintained by ProtonMail (its likely the only one in the world that works in browsers), they have accounted for the concern and developed a system that allows you to compare the code in your browser with the code that they’ve published Their implementation for the checksum is actually cool, I like it. However, I believe that most people use protonmail for convenience and that it fits the threat model of the average joe. If you're getting targeted by the NSA, you shouldn't use a browser with JIT enabled anyway.
  • gillesjacobs 5y ago
    Having user auditable source code and verifiable builds is pretty much the gold standard approach. Yes, the vast majority won't check the checksum and even less well check the source, but it only takes one critical person to get the ball rolling upon compromise.
    • Brian_K_White 5y ago
      Yep. The difference between convenient and inconvenient doesn't really matter at all. Visibility is the difference between possible and not-possible. That is all the difference in the world, and matters no matter how few people ever actually do something.
  • yanmaani 5y ago
    > Because everyone uses reproducible builds Of course not, but it is possible to do so. It can also be verified by trusted third parties, etc. > However, I believe that most people use protonmail for convenience and that it fits the threat model of the average joe. If you're getting targeted by the NSA, you shouldn't use a browser with JIT enabled anyway. This is a non-sequitur. If you're starting to talk about average Joes with an unspecified threat model, surely GMail will be fine too, for some very low bar of "crooks can't hack my facebook". But there's obviously a big span inbetween that and "specifically targeted by intelligence agencies". More to the point, no matter your threat model, you should try not to do business with scammers. Firstly, out of moral imperative, and secondly, because your threat model might change.
• nabla9 5y ago
  This is just nutjob bs.
• mLuby 5y ago
  "And the flaw is that it is relatively simple for ProtonMail to serve you a modified version of their web application or the underlying PGP implementation. There is no way to cryptographically verify that you are getting the official version of the web client as stored in their repository. If PM decides to act maliciously, they can do so undetected. Unlike the mobile application who’s binaries get cryptographically signed to match the official codebase, there is no method to verify a web application." If the web client is open-source (as at seems), can't anyone build it locally and compare the built files to what they were served?
  • pmoriarty 5y ago
    "If the web client is open-source (as at seems), can't anyone build it locally and compare the built files to what they were served?" Yes, but the results of such an inspection would only apply to that particular web request at that particular time. At another time, or to some other person, a different app could be served up by ProtonMail if they so chose. That's not to mention that the vast majority of ProtonMail users probably don't (and wouldn't have the skills to) evaluate the code they receive from ProtonMail, so even if they were being served up something suspicious, they'd never know.
    • mLuby 5y ago
      Something like a browser extension could make that kind of check repeatable, automatic, and unobtrusive unless there's a discrepancy. Assuming builds don't happen too too often. Yes, either you'd have to verify the build yourself or trust someone else to do it and independently publish something for the extension to compare to the client it's served.
      • dane-pgp 5y ago
        Something like a browser extension for this does already exist, fortunately: https://github.com/tasn/webext-signed-pages https://github.com/tasn/webext-signed-pages
• greatjack613 5y ago
  The title is super clickbaity, emails are likely compromised?? Uh no. Every single closed source client for end to end encrypted messaging has this problem. What happens if whatsapp decides to exfiltrate your end to end encrypted messages from the client side app?? There is nothing you can do to stop them. They can even attach it to an analytics event to be discrete. Protonmail is unable to view your emails without your password and that claim is true regardless of whether they hold your encrypted private key server side. Total garbage
• adamsmith143 5y ago
  Not sure what to make of the source, a random writer on a new age hippy website? Seems that the primary claim is that ProtonMail is potentially compromised by Intelligence agencies and can nefariously show users fake pages to steal credentials and decrypt messages? Overall the article seems light on evidence. Edit: Found a response from ProtonMail to the Researcher quoted in OP's article. https://protonmail.com/blog/cryptographic-architecture-response/ https://protonmail.com/blog/cryptographic-architecture-respo...
• vehemenz 5y ago
  I don't think the headline matches the post. Usually when we refer to systems being "insecure" and "compromised", we mean so with respect to a third party. A better headline might be: ProtonMail supports full E2EE, provided you trust them with your keys (if not, why are you paying for their service?).
  • dane-pgp 5y ago
    If you trust them with your keys, why not trust them with your plaintext? At which point, why bother with E2EE at all? The answer should be "because one day web browsers will be able to pin specific versions of specific web apps, with specific hashes, corresponding to specific releases tagged in their repo, which have been audited by a certain threshold of auditors that I trust". What that looks like in practice is probably some mixture of the following projects: https://github.com/kpcyrd/pacman-bintrans https://github.com/kpcyrd/pacman-bintrans https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-code-reviews-web-site-for-cargo-crev/44480 https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-code-reviews-web-site-for... https://paragonie.com/blog/2022/01/solving-open-source-supply-chain-security-for-php-ecosystem https://paragonie.com/blog/2022/01/solving-open-source-suppl...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Pooge 5y ago
  > In addition to this, ProtonMail has no password requirements, and the Professor has tested it with passwords like ‘1’, ‘iloveyou’, and ‘password’, which are all trivial to crack in dictionary attacks. Once these can be confirmed, an attacker has your entire email history. Surely, they could enforce password requirements, but for me every user is responsible of having a secure password. If your account gets compromised despite the service hashing password correctly and having brute-force prevention mechanisms in place, it's on you for not having a strong enough password (or reusing it). > And the flaw is that it is relatively simple for ProtonMail to serve you a modified version of their web application or the underlying PGP implementation. There is no way to cryptographically verify that you are getting the official version of the web client as stored in their repository. Yes, this is true. But for anyone requiring absolute state-of-the-art privacy, you could simply use your own pair of keys without ever sending it to ProtonMail (i.e. you would use ProtonMail to send and not to encrypt, even though you would still benefit from their encryption as an additional layer). All open-source web-based services have this kind of flaw. > PM can once again replace the web application or PGP software to recover the original message and passcode. (This is in reference to the "Encrypt-To-Outside feature".) Yes, this is true as well, but look at the alternative: I send an email to your Gmail account. Google can read it. Then, you reply to my email, and ProtonMail could catch it in transit while it's not encrypted. I mean, they don't need you to use that feature to be able to catch your communications. So, we're back to the fact that they could serve a different version of the source code than they advertise. I really fail to see the point of this article. I'm sure most of the users use it to stay away from Google tracking, and even the author agrees that if you need total privacy you should use your own keys.
• BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  If you want a webmail, which most people do, their archi makes sense. How else are you going to do it ? Balance between security and usability, as usual. If you want more, use pgp, but loose most users.
  • yanmaani 5y ago
    If I want to remove the airbags from my car and strap a gigantic bomb in there instead, this particular method of doing it makes sense. I mean, yes, that's true, but it's still a bad idea. > Balance between security and usability, as usual. If you want more, use pgp, but loose most users. They could just have a local client. Thunderbird/Outlook/whatever isn't exactly difficult to use, even for non-technical people.
    • jamesgeck0 5y ago
      > They could just have a local client. They do. This is what ProtonMail Bridge is.
      • BiteCode_dev 5y ago
        Indeed, and yet a lot of users still use the webmail, because everything in IT is a compromise.
• n0ot 5y ago
  I use ProtonMail because I want to use an email address at my own domain. It's actually an inconvenience though, because their IOS app does not let me compose a message with VoiceOver, and when I reached out to them, they basically told me that they're not implementing features until they do their UI redesign. Most of the time, I compose messages in a desktop browser, but the few times I've needed to do so from my phone has required me to open Safari and do it from there, which was a pain. I'm not looking for military grade encryption in a subterrainian mountain; I just want email at my domain from a service that doesn't read all of my emails and profile me based on their contents. I've looked into hosting my own email from a VPS, but it's not a trivial project, and I'm most worried about being blacklisted before I even start, since it seems most VPS providers are. Any recommendations?
  • SecurityLagoon 5y ago
    Might want to try Tutanota or Fastmail. I've heard good things about them but never tried either. I'm currently on protonmail and I am also getting frustrated by their glacial rate of change for reported bugs and quality of life improvements. Also their calendar is one of the worst calendars I have ever used so need to use another service for that anyway.
• aborsy 5y ago
  The article appears to be an obvious attack on ProtonMail. It’s clear that private keys are held client-side-encrypted on servers. You need that to read your emails in new devices. It’s standard and doesn’t lower security. It’s also obvious that any website could serve you with bad Java script code. Waste of time.