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Jeff Atwood's security blunder regarding email
- ceejayoz 15y agoIn fairness, if you're e-mailing yourself, chances are it's not going out over the public internet at any point. In Gmail, it's likely not even going anywhere except straight into Google's database.
- unimpressive 15y ago>In fairness, if you're e-mailing yourself, chances are it's not going out over the public internet at any point. I beg to differ: traceroute gmail.com Or on windows: tracert gmail.com Now do correct me if I'm wrong. But those commands seem to show my packets being routed over the public Internet. EDIT: While the point about SSL is valid, see my post below. EDIT2: And as stated above, having your passwords plaintext anywhere, espicially in the cloud, isn't ideal.
- justinjlynn 15y agoI have a feeling he was referring to e-mailing yourself with g-mail's web interface (which you connection to is, typically, SSL Encrypted). However, as the data is still stored unencrypted on google's servers so... yeah, still sucks.
- bertzzie 15y agoReally curious, how do you guys know that google's servers store our data unencrypted?
- ceejayoz 15y agoWhen talking about passwords, best to assume the worst case.
- sasidharm 15y agoEven if the data is stored encrypted, Google can always decrypt it on an as needed basis (since they serve ads based on the content of the email messages.)
- tedunangst 15y agoSince email generally traverses the internet unencrypted, the consensus is that it's already insecure. There's little to be gained by encrypting it after the fact. Besides that, what key would they encrypt it with? Something from your password? What do they do with email you get while not logged in? How do you build a search index? I'm actually building something similar, and even after a lot of effort, there's tons of corner cases that simply cannot be protected, so it seems a reasonable guess that gmail does nothing special to encrypt your data. [edit to add that once you include oauth in the picture, I think the encryption story starts getting really fuzzy.]
- nknight 15y agoIt doesn't really matter. Any method of server-side encryption for email (and many other) systems as we currently understand them has inherent flaws. The simple fact is that key material is accessible in RAM, and even if it weren't, the data still must be decrypted at some point, and once the server is compromised, you can likely capture that decrypted data. That's not to say you shouldn't do it -- it helps prevent accidents like unwiped drives getting out, and might be a reasonably effective obfuscation against some attacks, but it just isn't secure in the same way that real end-to-end encryption can be.
- jackowayed 15y agoThe packets are routed over the public Internet, but if you're using HTTPS, they'll look like encrypted garbage to anyone who doesn't have Google's SSL private key.
- unimpressive 15y agoThough once again in all fairness, the security of SSL is not a guarantee. (See: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-on-attempted-man-in-middle.html http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-on-a...)
- ravivyas 15y agoThe DigiNotar case was an anomaly where the certificate provider was compromised. This is a rare case.
- unimpressive 15y agohttp://www.infoworld.com/t/authentication/weaknesses-in-ssl-certification-exposed-comodo-security-breach-593 http://www.infoworld.com/t/authentication/weaknesses-in-ssl-... Seems to happen often enough. (Then again, 2011 seems to have been something of an unlucky year for security professionals. Just ask RSA.)
- ravivyas 15y agoWell you got to trust someone... else you should just unplug your computer from the internet :)
- sneak 15y agoIt's nowhere near as rare as you think. There are sub-CA certs issued to private companies all the time, allowing them to MITM any default browser config. The PKI is now totally broken.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sonnym 15y agoIf you are using an e-mail client, you will be connecting to the gmail server using STARTTLS, so your e-mails will not be transferred over the public internet in plain text. If you use the web client, everything is over HTTPS, and, like the gp stated, probably goes nowhere beyond the database, although merely a supposition.
- gizzlon 15y agoIf you're using a client your mail is probably delivered to a local smtp server, might bounce around for a while, and is then delivered to gmail server. You don't know that the last step uses ssl/tsl. Even if it does, what about the 3 other servers it touched? Was it logged somewhere? Did the anti-spam store it? Was it even removed from the spool at all? My point is, email was not designed to be "secure" (i.e., secret), and is not though that way. Therefore ppl do not work very hard to secure email, and one little band-aid doesn't magically make the whole system "secure". Your mail could turn up in a log file 5 years from now.
- tedunangst 15y agoIt's still stored unencrypted, which is not the ideal state for a password at rest.
- ceejayoz 15y agoAbsolutely. I use 1password, and it's hard to beat - encrypted, well organized (certainly better than searching Gmail for e-mails from myself!), and it syncs the encrypted store to Dropbox so I can have it on multiple computers.
- grimboy 15y agoYour password is 1password too?
- elchief 15y agogmail has been revamped so that China, with a fuck-ton of resources and desire, cannot get into it. they hired the NSA to help them. maybe it's no longer secure from the NSA, but it is from everyone else.
- javert 15y agoSource? It's very hard for me to imagine truly trusting that China cannot get into Gmail. Even if you have a great source. :-P
- elchief 15y agothis didn't happen that long ago. gmail was broken into by someone representing the chinese government. google fully admitted to this. this admittance did not seem to hurt their rep. they would probably admit to it if it had happened again. google soon thereafter asked the nsa to help them out with security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020304057.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/science/05google.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/science/05google.html I am not saying that it's impossible for China to get in, but I'm sure it's a whole lot harder
- zobzu 15y agoGoogle is on the public internet, you know.
- Deestan 15y agoI deposit money in my bank. My bank is located in Bank Street. Therefore, I have dumped my money in the street.
- zobzu 15y agoIn bank street. You have dumped the money in bank street. yes. The huge difference between Internet and the street- and by street i actually mean the safe of the bank, is the ease to steal from the Internet undetected. Good luck stealing from the bank undetected. You see, they'd have to sneak in and still for example, 0.1cts from random accounts. Easy electronically. Impossible physically. The Internet is not nearly as well protected as the physical world AND it doesn't leave traces. It's like making an analogy to everything + cars. It just doesn't make any sense. Sorry.
- chime 15y agoEmailing yourself password-protected MS Office files isn't much secure either (unless something has changed in 2010 version). I've routinely cracked passwords for my users using freely available tools when they couldn't remember the password to unprotect an Excel workbook.
- nhebb 15y agoWhich version of Excel were you working with? Security was greatly increased in Office 2007. http://serverfault.com/questions/122627/how-secure-is-the-encryption-used-by-microsoft-office-2007 http://serverfault.com/questions/122627/how-secure-is-the-en...
- tedunangst 15y agoWere their passwords more complex than "secret"? There is a known flaw that Office uses (used? I believe it's unfixed) the same RC4 stream for multiple versions of a document, which could be bad news if you used the same password for them and an attacker has old revisions, but even so, that may be hard to leverage if the doc in question is just a list of passwords. [nm, it's been fixed for a while. thanks, nhebb.]
- yuhong 15y agoThere was two RC4 keystream reuse flaws in the Office binary formats. One involved salt reuse on save (an implementation bug) and was fixed in Office 2007. But there is still another one that can't be fixed without changing the file format. The original Office 2007 file formats used AES-ECB, but later switched to CBC in SP2.
- zalew 15y agoif you are emailing yourself, you are doing it wrong
- fsckin 15y agoI'm surprised more people don't email themselves. Gmail indexes messages, which makes it incredibly fast to find a note that I sent to myself. I also use it to remind myself about something important to eventually remember, but I can't work on it right now.
- treetrouble 15y agoI use Notational Velocity + Dropbox for this
- oconnore 15y agoThe assumption he implicitly makes is that Google is not going to do anything malicious with his password, and has a secure enough network. If you take this assumption to be true, then his practice of emailing himself private information (over SSL, you can't access gmail without it), is reasonable. Now if you want to take issue with his assumption, then go right ahead, but this is not an instance of Jeff Atwood misunderstanding how [eg]mail works.
- knewter 15y agoThe only reason for this would be that gmail -> gmail email doesn't leave their servers. However, I think it's irresponsible to suggest emailing oneself private information without explaining the caveat, because others might, say, do the same thing from their work email to their gmail account, and consequently send private data in the clear through random mail servers.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sneak 15y agoThe GMail smtp service supports STARTTLS for incoming mail. It could very well be encrypted every single hop, from sending client to origin SMTP relay, from SMTP relay to GMail, and then from GMail to receiving IMAPS client. The situation is a lot better than it was a handful of years ago. It's not quite the "don't ever do this!" it once was.
- tantalor 15y agoIt doesn't just support it, it requires it.
- biafra 15y agoGMail does not require STARTTLS. I am sure you can send email to GMail accounts with unencrypted SMTP. Just look at the incoming "Received" headers. If they do not contain a "cipher=" section, the connection was not encrypted. I think what you mean is that GMail requires you to use https for their web interface.
- trout 15y agoThe 'recently closed tabs' feature in recent browsers also makes closing your session more difficult. A few years ago it was considered good practice to close your window after checking your account. Now it is just a click in the browser to fully restore that window. Remember to 'Sign Out' all the time, 2 factor doesn't help in this case.
- zobzu 15y agoI hope you remember that Gmail scans your email for their stats and adverts and that your email storage is in NO WAY private. Go read the TOS, or the various websites explaining the TOS if it's easier. More than that, many Google employees, for stats or project purposes may read them. More than that, you'd think gmail has never been broken into? Public info != reality. Emailing yourself sensitive data unencrypted is simply dumb.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 15y agoThis gives me an idea. A secure web notebook where you can record things that only you can get out. They will be encrypted on the server basically, and your password will be used to decrypt them. Also you will use SSL to post. Is there any vault like this that's freely accessible?
- chaitanya 15y agoLastPass has a "Secure Notes" feature which works this way.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 15y agoThe problem with such a service is that there's no practical way to figure out whether they're reading your data on the sly. (Even if your data is technically being encrypted on the client side, there's nothing to stop them from slipping in some extra JS one day to start sending your encryption key to their server.)
- georgemcbay 15y agoOnly the super paranoid would bother using a service like this, and those people would require verifiable encryption on the client side.
- dchest 15y agoThey will be encrypted on the server basically And now you have to trust the server.
- ta12121 15y agoAtwood often makes blatant mistakes like this. I truly don't understand why his blog is so popular.
- Locke1689 15y agoData on the move -- TLS via OpenSSL. Data at rest -- GPG. Don't trust anything else. (OK, technically there are cases where you should trust other stuff, but if you can recognize it you are probably a professional cryptographer).
- sneak 15y agoGreat idea in theory, however, I'd like to know how you search your emails on your smartphone while traveling when all of your mails are GPG-encrypted on the server. Or do you carry your GPG key around on your smartphone? This solution, while technically pure, does not work. Those of us that live in the Real World send our regards.
- Locke1689 15y agoMy email is accessed over TLS. I have no idea what to tell you if yours isn't. Oh, and my email isn't GPG encrypted. I just don't store sensitive data in my email.
- sneak 15y agoThe argument could be made that if your email doesn't contain anything sensitive, then you're not living life correctly. :)
- AgentConundrum 15y agoI have to agree with this. I hadn't read Jeff's post yet since, really, I haven't regularly read his stuff in probably two or three years, but I just did. The only mention of emailing things to yourself is wholly contained in the following paragraph: > The upside is that once you enable this, your email becomes extremely secure, to the point that you can (and I regularly do) email yourself highly sensitive data like passwords and logins to other sites you visit so you can easily retrieve them later. To me, that's really dangerous advice. It relies on the assumption that you're only emailing things from your own gmail account, to your own gmail account. This means that the only transfer happens between you and Google over a secure HTTPS connection. Your data is transferred securely, stored on Google's servers, and securely transferred back to you when you request it. At no point is this specific assumption pointed out, nor are the problems with it discussed. First, although I can't think of a particular reason why gmail-to-gmail emails would be routed outside of Google's servers, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. If someone could point a blog post discussing it, I would appreciate it. Second, All bets are off if you use a separate provider. One example might be work email. If you're signed in to a work account already, you might be more inclined to just use that to toss an email at yourself for later. I've certainly done that before, even though I could sign into gmail from work. People could make the mistake of thinking he's saying "send an email to yourself from anywhere" which isn't correct. Incidentally, activating two-factor auth makes it more likely that someone would do work-to-home emailing since there's now an extra barrier to just logging into gmail. Finally, this seems to rely on the assumption that you're only using the web client to access gmail. If you're using POP3 or IMAP to access your account, you could still be at risk, since I think (though admittedly I'm unsure since I only use the web interface) that these protocols aren't encrypted by default.
- tantalor 15y ago> At no point is this specific assumption pointed out, nor are the problems with it discussed. To "email yourself" implies using the same service. > If you're using POP3 or IMAP to access your account, you could still be at risk, since I think (though admittedly I'm unsure since I only use the web interface) that these protocols aren't encrypted by default. Gmail IMAP requires SSL: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78799 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
- twelvechairs 15y agoOne thing nobody is commenting on here is that the easiest way to avoid your passwords being stolen is actually just to ensure that nobody other than yourself knows that that they are passwords. Develop an estoteric system (don't use the word 'password' anywhere, don't store passwords with the full name of what they access, don't repeatedly access the same encrypted document [telling anyone looking for your secrets 'Decrypt this!']) and you are likely to put off all but someone ridiculously determined to target you. Even better - don't put it online and don't even save it digitally if you can avoid it (is anyone that steals your wallet or burgles your house going to really bother trying to figure out what a hand-scribbled series of characters might mean?).
- DanBC 15y agoAtwood's solution is flawed because law enforcement only need to give correctly formed documents to Google to get all your passwords over a bunch of services. Imagine someone using Hushmail in the same way. It should be a lot more secure. Hushmail uses strong encryption, but has in the past served specially crafted Java applications to the customer because they were cooperating with law enforcement. Admittedly, if you have law enforcement after you then you need to start being a lot more careful with everything.
- willvarfar 15y agoJeff regularly "drops the ball" on most things. He blogs about what he is learning about, and not what he has mastered. Remember him getting his knickers in a twist over AES ECB? Or more recently conflating secure hashes with hashes for other purposes? Or back-peddling on, well, everything?! I love his writing and read every blog entry. But I shudder if we hold him up as an expert in recommending how to secure passwords and such!
- slavak 15y agoAll due respect, I've been unable to take Atwood very seriously after I read this[1], and, shortly afterwards, this[2]. [1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/software-engineering-dead.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/software-engineerin... [2] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/your-favorite-np-complete-cheat.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/your-favorite-np-co...
- Confusion 15y agoIt's a serious problem that this is currently the topvoted comment. It means that people are upvoting it because they agree with the sentiment, while not realizing that neither their nor slavak's opinion of Atwood's writing should be interesting to anyone. They shouldn't be interesting, because the opinion is on the one hand unsupported and is on the other hand based on the fundamental attribution error [1]. I say unsupported, because if anyone actually read the supposed supporting links, there would at least be a discussion concerning the first link in these comments. At least, I don't see how the contents of that post disqualifies Atwood. I don't think upvoters are actually reviewing the evidence to see if they agree with this reason for disliking Atwood. Concerning the second link: if you write off Atwood based on occasional mistakes, you are committing the fundamental attribution error [1]: thinking that someone, and therefore all his writing, must be worthless, simply because he sometimes writes nonsense. Never forget that smart and interesting people also make mistakes. Atwood takes the time to air and explain his ideas about programming. He's not a great writer or a deep thinker [2], but that doesn't matter: he is one of us thinking about what it means to be one of us. I find all of his thoughts interesting, if only to see how someone can come to a different conclusion based on the same premises. They are interesting even if I disagree and even if he is wrong, because it shines a light on how colleagues may think about things. For instance, the second link clearly warns me that I can never take for granted that someone understands what NP-completeness means and have to verify it. That makes even that post worthwhile. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error [2] Though certainly not a bad writer or a shallow thinker
- gradstudent 15y ago
- Daniel_Newby 15y agoAnd for the next six weeks get stalked around the web by "Buy Tfk166acq at Nextag.com".
- Tichy 15y ago"Using a secure connection (HTTPS), which Atwood fails to mention" Is it possible to use GMail without HTTPS? Somehow I can't imagine Google would enable that?
- Jach 15y agoI think it's required nowadays, or at least used by default, but less than a couple years ago HTTPS was a setting you had to manually enable and before that wasn't offered at all. Also HTTPS is only secure if you trust the cert companies, which I don't after the multiple fake certs issued last year (with at least one *.google.com presumably issued to Iran). The best way to secure your sensitive emails has been the same since the 90s: PGP encryption. (The tradeoffs have also been known.)