31 ms·

Encrypted e-mail: How much annoyance will you tolerate to keep the NSA away?

72 points by greenburger 13y ago

aroch 13y ago
Nowadays is GPG/PGP-ing your emails really that hard? Thunderbird supports GPG on all platforms, Apple's default Mail works with PGP/GPG, I'm sure there are plenty of windows clients that do the same. In additional, online providers like Hush are bringing PGP to the masses without them having to know what in fucks name it is. Even if you don't encrypt every mail you send, signing is a good idea. Is it unnecessary in many circumstances? Yes, but at least I find it nice to be able to verify authenticity. I don't understand why my bank (Wells Fargo) can't figure out how to sign all their emails [1]. ______ 1: https://www.wellsfargo.com/downloads/pdf/com/cps/Secure_Email_User_Guide.pdf https://www.wellsfargo.com/downloads/pdf/com/cps/Secure_Emai... Yes, they can sign some emails...but it requires someone inside WF "sponsor" you to be added to their PKI and it still won't lead to signed or even encrypted emails for online banking. WF is also particularly egregious in not offering real 2FA...they count a username AND a password as "two factor authentication". sigh
- mpyne 13y ago
  GPG support is actually one of the very big things that has kept me using KMail even with Akonadi's rather poor support for POP3 w/ filtering. Being able to expand that web of trust even to businesses and among the tech-savvy would be wonderful, if only to increase awareness of the idea that things which need to be secret from unintended viewers (including, but not limited to, the NSA) need to be encrypted.
  - aroch 13y ago
    Why not move over to thunderbird? It supports GPG through enigmail
    - mpyne 13y ago
      I don't need extensions with Kontact, it's built-in. Also I still use Akregator and the organizer/calendaring. What I'll probably do is to switch my damn email over to IMAP at some point, apparently that's what the kdepim devs are all using... but I don't want to have to fix all my filters, and then I would have to use fetchmail and run dovecot or similar to have my email on my own computer.
      - dualboot 13y ago
        Thankfully Dovecot + Sieve makes the transition pretty easy.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "Nowadays is GPG/PGP-ing your emails really that hard?" Try convincing people to not use webmail and accept the fact that they cannot just check mail on whatever random computer they come across. I speak from experience: this is the biggest hurdle.
  - aroch 13y ago
    Have them use Hush, or any number of the in-browser GPG/PGP extensions that will encrypt your gmail then! At least their webmail is encrypted then (and Hush integrates with most of the notable PKI servers). You have to start them somewhere, just lamenting about it isn't going to change anything. I've moved my family and friends into GPG over the lsat few years and now I receive GPG-encrypted mail more often than not.
    - greyone 13y ago
      You can also use Countermail which provides end-to-end PGP security (unlike Hushmail). Here's my article with more info: http://www.greycoder.com/how-to-stop-the-nsa-from-spying-on-you/ http://www.greycoder.com/how-to-stop-the-nsa-from-spying-on-...
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Browser plugins are good, but they do not solve the problem most people have complained about to me: that they cannot check their mail on their friend's computers, at the library, etc. Hushmail is snake oil, I would not recommend it to anyone and I doubt that it is even relevant to the problem at hand (how to communicate privately in a world of NSLs).
      - ippisl 13y ago
        Use a USB key with everything installed on it in a portable fashion. The Tor Browser Bundle is something like this. Two issues with this method are that TOR is 80% funded by the us government, using a computer opens you to backdoors. But at least that's a good start.
  - 13y ago
- LiamMcCalloway 13y ago
  Set-up can be daunting, but I always found that entering one's password every time a new mail comes in is unbearable. They should highlight that the pgp password timeout can be changed to something less intrusive.
  - aroch 13y ago
    The default timeout, at least for gpg, is 3600sec (1 hour) which should be more than enough for the majority of people's emailing habits (Sitting down and checking / emailing once or twice a day). Recently setup has become super easy[1], especially on the OSX or *nix side of things. OSX probably has the easiest flow, all you have to do is install one thing[2] and you're off. It will walk you through everything[3] and it supports the built in Mail.app. _________ 1: http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/frontends.html http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/frontends.html 2: https://gpgtools.org/ https://gpgtools.org/ 3: http://support.gpgtools.org/kb/how-to/first-steps-where-do-i-start-where-do-i-begin http://support.gpgtools.org/kb/how-to/first-steps-where-do-i... >When you run GPG Keychain Access for the first time, the window will be empty or contain only the GPGTools Project Key (delivered via the GPGTools Installer). >If you don't have a private key, you'll be prompted to create a new key pair.
    - LiamMcCalloway 13y ago
      I think most people respond to their mails pretty much as they come in. I'd add that in corporate settings a norm of near immediate response has developed. I've set my timeout at 9999sec -- mutt throws in an error if I add a digit. I don't use OSX, but can you comment on how easy key exchange is nowadays? I have to admit that I have it set up and ready to roll, but pretty much no one I know is willing to take the plunge.
      - aroch 13y ago
        >I think most people respond to their mails pretty much as they come in Maybe when at work, but at home most people (Especially of the older generation) seem to check their email a few times a day. Corporate users should never be using webmail on their work computer...If they're MS Exchange based, they should be using Outlook and their exchange policy should allow (and prefer) S/MIME. There are a variety of plugins for Outlook that support GPG and S/MIME is already signed and encrypted. Pubkey's should always be make available through the existing online PKI services. I personally send all my keys through pgp.mit.edu to be mirrored world-wide. Key-exchange (For High to Ultimate trust scenarios) is simple and easy. Send someone your pubkey by signing it with their pubkey and email it in a signed email (with signed attachments) to them. Have them do the reverse.
- xtrumanx 13y ago
  > they count a username AND a password as "two factor authentication" I was so flabbergasted by that I had to look it up and it seems like you're wrong. This page[0] describes a feature called Advanced Access that sends a code to your phone whenever you do certain actions on the website. [0] https://www.wellsfargo.com/privacy_security/online/advancedaccess https://www.wellsfargo.com/privacy_security/online/advanceda...
  - aroch 13y ago
    That's only for things like online money transfers, and not account related. They maybe have pulled the particular document I'm referring to, but at one point they had the same / similar text to what Schneier quotes. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/bank_botches_tw_1.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/bank_botches_...
gesman 13y ago
Encrypting email would only make sense if both sides are equally encrypting it. If you're using the most paranoidal encryption, but your email buddy does not - than it's all just plain silly. But even then if Joe and Bill suddenly got smarty-pants and started encrypting their communication - NSA would get suspicious and will find out what you guys are up to via other channels. "The best way to hide information - is to convince others that it does not exists" --Me
- gesman 13y ago
  PS: The ultimate solution would be to use Tor-based email (similar to tormail.org) at both sides AND encrypt it from both ends. Then NSA does not know who is communicating and NSA does not know what they are talking about. Problem solved.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>Problem solved. I wouldn't be so sure. Snowden was hinting at the NSA having the mechanism to break encryption. I lost the exact quote, but it was a direct response to the suggestion that we encrypt everything, and was something along the lines of, "you wouldn't even believe what the NSA is really capable of - it's scary." Even if they don't have the means to get around encryption, you still aren't fully secure. What if you have a keylogger installed on your machine? What if the hardware itself has been designed to aid the NSA? Intel, after all, is one of their regular collaborators.
    - m_eiman 13y ago
      If they have to install a keylogger, at least they have to specifically target you.
    - tomjen3 13y ago
      If NSA can break modern crypto (especially if they can do it in real time) then it is a secret at least as big as Ultra/Magic and the NSA wouldn't ever dare to use anything they found on you this way, even if it was the only way to prevent another 9/11.
junto 13y ago
Are there any heavily supported projects that seek to replace email as we know it with a 'secure by default' implementation? I.e. One that keeps the decentralized simplicity of email as it is today, whilst both securing it and removing the negatives, such as spam? If Microsoft, Yahoo and Google got together they could flesh this out, and as long as the specifications were open and license free, then other third parties would start to develop SecMail servers.
- kijin 13y ago
  None that I'm aware of, and IMO none is likely to be launched any time soon. Email is open and license-free, only because it was invented back in the days when not even Richard Stallman saw any need for free software. If email were reinvented today, you'd end up with something very different. It would be copyrighted, patented, and supported by corporations who have strong financial incentives to keep it locked into their proprietary platforms. The only company that I can think of who might have a chance of success at producing an open and license-free reinvention of email is Mozilla, but they don't seem to be particularly interested in email nowadays. Thunderbird has been stuck at version 17 for ages.
- leot 13y ago
  Only one webmail provider would need to deploy PGP-by-default to start the ball rolling. The system is currently in a dynamically stable (extremely) insecure state. Starting widescale adoption of PGP would disrupt the state of the market and, perhaps, lead to an escalation of deployment security.
- kimlelly 13y ago
  http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
- betterunix 13y ago
  How is PGP not a solution here? You are (a) using the email system, (b) your messages are privacy, and (c) your mail client will perform spam filtering. If you need to hide who you are communicating with, there are anonymous remailers, or you can broadcast your encrypted messages over Usenet. Really, these problems were already solved a long time ago, but people thought it was just paranoid to even suggest that the solutions were necessary.
xradionut 13y ago
Meta Comment: Considering that Ars is mining their forum database and pissing off members/subscribers to post tabloid-style shaming articles about the NSA whistleblower, I believe the first step in privacy is to avoid visiting their web site ever again.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Actually, their approach was pretty reasonable. Another site did it before Ars did in a more tabloid manner.
  - xradionut 13y ago
    As a long term, now former subscriber, I have to disagree with you. It's all about the page clicks today, fuck the users.
- clicks 13y ago
  That may be, but really... privacy is dead. It is pretty much impossible to not be outed out on every last forum you used to participate in when the whole world has an eye on you. If Ars hadn't done it, someone would have put the pieces together. In this day and age, to ensure 100% privacy you have to _really_ go out of your way. It's difficult for cypherpunks to pull it off, let alone normal users.
- untog 13y ago
  They used publicly available quotes. Are we not allowed to post any negative coverage of Snowden now?
chiph 13y ago
Hmm. Need to add my public key to my About page. Thanks for the reminder. I wonder if I can add it to my LinkedIn profile?
pandog 13y ago
They appear to take a SHA1 Checksum from an unencrypted (non-HTTPS) website to verify the integrity of the download. Surely if you're worried about the integrity of the file you should also be worried about the integrity of the source website also?
- croikle 13y ago
  Yep, they're still rather vulnerable. I guess their approach would stop a dumb MitM which just replaces any .exe download. It also protects against the download server being compromised, assuming the original server is fine and your connection is clean. The best way is to check the signature, but that requires GPG in the first place (and trust on the key remains hairy). At least they could serve the site with HTTPS (GPGTools does this right).
annon2003 13y ago
We are now using S/mime and in today's Apple+Thunderbird products it's completely built-in and pain-free. Set it up once and after that all emails get encrypted automatically, you don't even need to press a button. Provided of course that You were able to convince your colleagues to invest those 10 minutes to set it up as well. PGP Was painful because every Mail.app update broke it, not sure about the current state-of-the-art there. But the whole point should be: it is not much of an annoyance anymore! Zero annoyance after installation, Works even on your iPhone etc.
- tigerente 13y ago
  Since it's latest update from end of March, MacGPG is fully compatible again with 10.8.
snarfy 13y ago
I can't support arstechnica anymore after the hatchet job done by joe mullin against snowden. http://arstechnica.com/author/joe-mullin-2/ http://arstechnica.com/author/joe-mullin-2/ How would you feel if your hacker news posts over the years were trolled into a very personal post about you on hacker news, done by a hacker news employee? The whole thing is creepy.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- untog 13y ago
  I'm sorry, but since when has quoting what someone publicly said been a "hatchet job"? 90% of it is quotes of what Snowden said, there's very little commentary. As the article pointed out, his identity on Ars Forums was already outed by Buzzfeed.
  - Cushman 13y ago
    The term you're looking for is "quote mining". If you take only the most opinionated parts from a large enough corpus, you can make almost anyone seem like an obsessive radical. It's all the more dishonest for that it claims honesty on the basis of technical truth. (I challenge anyone investigating my past to include this tidbit :)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
IBCNU 13y ago
I'm surprised more people haven't read between the lines: the NSA is in possession of quantum computers and interference based decryption is probably already in standard use. Insiders also have dropped hints the Tor networks is, in fact, a trojan horse. We basically have two * extreme * options: 1) a trusted courier with a sealed envelope (don't underestimate this Game of Thrones like scenario as the US Military defeated itself in the largest wargame in the gulf by using courier, sealed envelopes, and motorbikes) and 2) quantum cryptographic communication. The latter is still only the realm of university labs and down at LANL but I read a paper which stated it's physically possible to pass keys along ethernet cable, but all parties need a device which acts as a gate. This in turn opens up Alice and Bob to traditional decryption methods if they're not air gapped from the web.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gibybo 13y ago
  Quantum computers do not allow you to break all public key cryptography, they only allow you to break the common forms in use today. For some example algorithms that are not vulnerable to quantum computers, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography Also, it would be quite remarkable if the NSA had quantum computers capable of breaking 2048 RSA or PGP keys. Possible, but extremely unlikely.
  - IBCNU 13y ago
    Ah, thank you for sharing this. I agree it's unlikely but given some of the * cough * political events as of late it seems more and more likely. Taking off my aluminum foil hat now...
  - __alexs 13y ago
    > Possible, but extremely unlikely. It doesn't seem improbable that the NSA are already recording encrypted communications because they are cheap to store and and have a reasonable chance of being broken in the future. They don't even need to break the algorithm for that data to become useful. In particular SSL encrypted web traffic of sites they suspect they might physically raid (or have cooperation with) in future seem like an excellent target. Although hopefully the increasing awareness and deployment of perfect forward secrecy should help with that attack.
druiid 13y ago
I think it not outside the realm of realistic to imagine that the NSA has the ability to break all/nearly all encrypted data with ease. I mean, I have had quite a few friends with PhD level mathematics degrees hired by the NSA. Haven't heard from them in a while, but I can guess at the reasons behind hiring people like them. Basically I would say the question isn't if we should encrypt e-mail (I think we should in general, regardless of NSA spying), but instead what encryption methods (if any) exist that would be beyond the capabilities of the NSA to easily break.
- IBCNU 13y ago
  New startup concept: 3d printed wax seals!
znq 13y ago
What about Android and iOS? Any recommendations on email clients with a somewhat good user interface and experience?
peter487 13y ago
I am not sure if such system existed in the past or if I read about it in some sci-fi book, but it worked as follows: You generated your key pair. In (almost) every country in almost every city there were “key signers” (basically trusted members of the PGP community). You met with them and they verified your identity and signed your public key. You needed to visit couple of them to get enough signatures to obtain certain level of trust in the PGP community. Once your level of trust was high enough you could start signing keys of other people. Too good to be true I guess…..
- narcissus 13y ago
  As far as I know, that's pretty much how it used to happen. I do believe there even used to be things called 'key signing parties' which was just a way to get a heap of people to do it en masse. Not to be confused with simply a 'key party', though, I presume.
  - joeyh 13y ago
    joey@gnu:~>gpg --recv-keys 2512E3C7 gpg: requesting key 2512E3C7 from hkp server pool.sks- keyservers.net gpg: key 2512E3C7: "Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>" 24 new signatures gpg: Total number processed: 1 gpg: new signatures: 24 KSP's still seem to be alive and well. I'm sure the NSA has long since pulled in this info about the people I met and signed keys with at Linux Conf Australia this winter. (Of course I Have Nothing To Hide.) If you're using any Linux distribution, there is certainly use of the web of trust at many points in the development, build, and delivery chain of its software.
cheyne 13y ago
I'm just using https://www.noteshred.com https://www.noteshred.com to send private messages. I can't be bothered with encrypted email software
tokenizerrr 13y ago
Anyone know why it is that banks and the likes are not signing their emails? Seems like the perfect use-case.
- dfc 13y ago
  Because the UIs for email encryption suck, few customers would verify the signatures and it would create another avenue for phishing.
- lloeki 13y ago
  Mine used to (via S/MIME). They fell a year or two ago back to a CYA boilerplate text that reads "email is inherently insecure blah blah blah".
petilon 13y ago
Why do you even want to keep the NSA away? I am more worried about companies such as Intelius than the NSA. Private companies such as Intelius are posting my personal information on the internet. Anyone who knows my real name can search the internet and find out where I work, my home address, my spouse's name, my home phone number and my age. I didn't put any of this information on the internet, in fact I don't even have a facebook account. Private companies collected and aggregated this information and put it on the internet. Some of the information came from public records (for example, home address from property ownership records), but some was very private (such as my home phone number, which is not even in my name and rarely given out). This is a huge violation of privacy and I have no way of stopping it. Anyone that wants to harm me can find out where I live with a few clicks of the mouse. I am not worried about the government spying on me. I am very worried about these for-profit businesses spying on me and outing my information on the internet. Why isn't arstechnica writing stories about that instead?
- superuser2 13y ago
  >I am not worried about the government spying on me. I am very worried about these for-profit businesses spying on me and outing my information on the internet. Why isn't arstechnica writing stories about that instead? You have the right to a private conversation. You don't have the right to a secret existence. Directory information (like a phone number) is not that private because there's nothing anyone can really do with it besides call you. We don't really recognize a right not to be called. Your phone records, however, lead to information about your friends, lovers, and business dealings. Exposure of that information is a much bigger deal to most people than the mere fact that they exist.
zeidrich 13y ago
I wonder how much the use of methods to avoid detection by the NSA triggers warning flags that puts you under more individual scrutiny. Sure, you can encrypt most things, but then maybe you look suspicious so you get special attention. Can you encrypt everything? Of course not.
- kimlelly 13y ago
  Maybe. But the real problem is: encryption is really only a short-term solution, we need a more fundamental one, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879308
  - betterunix 13y ago
    How is encryption a short-term solution? We want to be able to communicate privately, without having to trust Google or Facebook to respect our privacy or protect us from external threats. The answer is to encrypt our communications. In the case of social networking, we probably need something more sophisticated than just public-key encryption, but researchers are already presenting solutions: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~arielfel/pub/Frientegrity-UsenixSecurity2012.pdf https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~arielfel/pub/Frientegrity-UsenixS... If the government will not respect our privacy -- and frankly, there is no reason to believe they will -- then we need to take matters into our own hands. We need to use cryptography to protect our privacy, so that no matter who comes into power we can communicate privately. That is a long-term solution, one that outlasts the government.
lazyjones 13y ago
First things first. PGP is useful, but pointless on a system that may be compromised/backdoored at any time (e.g. Windows, iOS, Android ... ). So the first - and possibly most annoying - step would be to install a secure OS.
- giardini 13y ago
  "...a secure OS." And that would be ???
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > And that would be ??? A mostly secure linux distribution booted from a read-only device would be a good start. c't Bankix is such a distribution, made specifically for secure online banking: http://www.heise.de/download/ct-bankix.html http://www.heise.de/download/ct-bankix.html
- quasque 13y ago
  Please describe how these operating systems could be compromised "at any time"?
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > Please describe how these operating systems could be compromised "at any time"? Targeted, automatic updates by the vendor with a suitable payload.

72 points by greenburger 13y ago

aroch 13y ago

Nowadays is GPG/PGP-ing your emails really that hard? Thunderbird supports GPG on all platforms, Apple's default Mail works with PGP/GPG, I'm sure there are plenty of windows clients that do the same. In additional, online providers like Hush are bringing PGP to the masses without them having to know what in fucks name it is. Even if you don't encrypt every mail you send, signing is a good idea. Is it unnecessary in many circumstances? Yes, but at least I find it nice to be able to verify authenticity. I don't understand why my bank (Wells Fargo) can't figure out how to sign all their emails [1]. ______ 1: https://www.wellsfargo.com/downloads/pdf/com/cps/Secure_Email_User_Guide.pdf https://www.wellsfargo.com/downloads/pdf/com/cps/Secure_Emai... Yes, they can sign some emails...but it requires someone inside WF "sponsor" you to be added to their PKI and it still won't lead to signed or even encrypted emails for online banking. WF is also particularly egregious in not offering real 2FA...they count a username AND a password as "two factor authentication". sigh

mpyne 13y ago
GPG support is actually one of the very big things that has kept me using KMail even with Akonadi's rather poor support for POP3 w/ filtering. Being able to expand that web of trust even to businesses and among the tech-savvy would be wonderful, if only to increase awareness of the idea that things which need to be secret from unintended viewers (including, but not limited to, the NSA) need to be encrypted.
- aroch 13y ago
  Why not move over to thunderbird? It supports GPG through enigmail
  - mpyne 13y ago
    I don't need extensions with Kontact, it's built-in. Also I still use Akregator and the organizer/calendaring. What I'll probably do is to switch my damn email over to IMAP at some point, apparently that's what the kdepim devs are all using... but I don't want to have to fix all my filters, and then I would have to use fetchmail and run dovecot or similar to have my email on my own computer.
    - dualboot 13y ago
      Thankfully Dovecot + Sieve makes the transition pretty easy.
betterunix 13y ago
"Nowadays is GPG/PGP-ing your emails really that hard?" Try convincing people to not use webmail and accept the fact that they cannot just check mail on whatever random computer they come across. I speak from experience: this is the biggest hurdle.
- aroch 13y ago
  Have them use Hush, or any number of the in-browser GPG/PGP extensions that will encrypt your gmail then! At least their webmail is encrypted then (and Hush integrates with most of the notable PKI servers). You have to start them somewhere, just lamenting about it isn't going to change anything. I've moved my family and friends into GPG over the lsat few years and now I receive GPG-encrypted mail more often than not.
  - greyone 13y ago
    You can also use Countermail which provides end-to-end PGP security (unlike Hushmail). Here's my article with more info: http://www.greycoder.com/how-to-stop-the-nsa-from-spying-on-you/ http://www.greycoder.com/how-to-stop-the-nsa-from-spying-on-...
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Browser plugins are good, but they do not solve the problem most people have complained about to me: that they cannot check their mail on their friend's computers, at the library, etc. Hushmail is snake oil, I would not recommend it to anyone and I doubt that it is even relevant to the problem at hand (how to communicate privately in a world of NSLs).
    - ippisl 13y ago
      Use a USB key with everything installed on it in a portable fashion. The Tor Browser Bundle is something like this. Two issues with this method are that TOR is 80% funded by the us government, using a computer opens you to backdoors. But at least that's a good start.
- 13y ago
LiamMcCalloway 13y ago
Set-up can be daunting, but I always found that entering one's password every time a new mail comes in is unbearable. They should highlight that the pgp password timeout can be changed to something less intrusive.
- aroch 13y ago
  The default timeout, at least for gpg, is 3600sec (1 hour) which should be more than enough for the majority of people's emailing habits (Sitting down and checking / emailing once or twice a day). Recently setup has become super easy[1], especially on the OSX or *nix side of things. OSX probably has the easiest flow, all you have to do is install one thing[2] and you're off. It will walk you through everything[3] and it supports the built in Mail.app. _________ 1: http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/frontends.html http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/frontends.html 2: https://gpgtools.org/ https://gpgtools.org/ 3: http://support.gpgtools.org/kb/how-to/first-steps-where-do-i-start-where-do-i-begin http://support.gpgtools.org/kb/how-to/first-steps-where-do-i... >When you run GPG Keychain Access for the first time, the window will be empty or contain only the GPGTools Project Key (delivered via the GPGTools Installer). >If you don't have a private key, you'll be prompted to create a new key pair.
  - LiamMcCalloway 13y ago
    I think most people respond to their mails pretty much as they come in. I'd add that in corporate settings a norm of near immediate response has developed. I've set my timeout at 9999sec -- mutt throws in an error if I add a digit. I don't use OSX, but can you comment on how easy key exchange is nowadays? I have to admit that I have it set up and ready to roll, but pretty much no one I know is willing to take the plunge.
    - aroch 13y ago
      >I think most people respond to their mails pretty much as they come in Maybe when at work, but at home most people (Especially of the older generation) seem to check their email a few times a day. Corporate users should never be using webmail on their work computer...If they're MS Exchange based, they should be using Outlook and their exchange policy should allow (and prefer) S/MIME. There are a variety of plugins for Outlook that support GPG and S/MIME is already signed and encrypted. Pubkey's should always be make available through the existing online PKI services. I personally send all my keys through pgp.mit.edu to be mirrored world-wide. Key-exchange (For High to Ultimate trust scenarios) is simple and easy. Send someone your pubkey by signing it with their pubkey and email it in a signed email (with signed attachments) to them. Have them do the reverse.
xtrumanx 13y ago
> they count a username AND a password as "two factor authentication" I was so flabbergasted by that I had to look it up and it seems like you're wrong. This page[0] describes a feature called Advanced Access that sends a code to your phone whenever you do certain actions on the website. [0] https://www.wellsfargo.com/privacy_security/online/advancedaccess https://www.wellsfargo.com/privacy_security/online/advanceda...
- aroch 13y ago
  That's only for things like online money transfers, and not account related. They maybe have pulled the particular document I'm referring to, but at one point they had the same / similar text to what Schneier quotes. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/bank_botches_tw_1.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/bank_botches_...

gesman 13y ago

Encrypting email would only make sense if both sides are equally encrypting it. If you're using the most paranoidal encryption, but your email buddy does not - than it's all just plain silly. But even then if Joe and Bill suddenly got smarty-pants and started encrypting their communication - NSA would get suspicious and will find out what you guys are up to via other channels. "The best way to hide information - is to convince others that it does not exists" --Me

gesman 13y ago
PS: The ultimate solution would be to use Tor-based email (similar to tormail.org) at both sides AND encrypt it from both ends. Then NSA does not know who is communicating and NSA does not know what they are talking about. Problem solved.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  >>Problem solved. I wouldn't be so sure. Snowden was hinting at the NSA having the mechanism to break encryption. I lost the exact quote, but it was a direct response to the suggestion that we encrypt everything, and was something along the lines of, "you wouldn't even believe what the NSA is really capable of - it's scary." Even if they don't have the means to get around encryption, you still aren't fully secure. What if you have a keylogger installed on your machine? What if the hardware itself has been designed to aid the NSA? Intel, after all, is one of their regular collaborators.
  - m_eiman 13y ago
    If they have to install a keylogger, at least they have to specifically target you.
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    If NSA can break modern crypto (especially if they can do it in real time) then it is a secret at least as big as Ultra/Magic and the NSA wouldn't ever dare to use anything they found on you this way, even if it was the only way to prevent another 9/11.

junto 13y ago

Are there any heavily supported projects that seek to replace email as we know it with a 'secure by default' implementation? I.e. One that keeps the decentralized simplicity of email as it is today, whilst both securing it and removing the negatives, such as spam? If Microsoft, Yahoo and Google got together they could flesh this out, and as long as the specifications were open and license free, then other third parties would start to develop SecMail servers.

kijin 13y ago
None that I'm aware of, and IMO none is likely to be launched any time soon. Email is open and license-free, only because it was invented back in the days when not even Richard Stallman saw any need for free software. If email were reinvented today, you'd end up with something very different. It would be copyrighted, patented, and supported by corporations who have strong financial incentives to keep it locked into their proprietary platforms. The only company that I can think of who might have a chance of success at producing an open and license-free reinvention of email is Mozilla, but they don't seem to be particularly interested in email nowadays. Thunderbird has been stuck at version 17 for ages.
leot 13y ago
Only one webmail provider would need to deploy PGP-by-default to start the ball rolling. The system is currently in a dynamically stable (extremely) insecure state. Starting widescale adoption of PGP would disrupt the state of the market and, perhaps, lead to an escalation of deployment security.
kimlelly 13y ago
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
betterunix 13y ago
How is PGP not a solution here? You are (a) using the email system, (b) your messages are privacy, and (c) your mail client will perform spam filtering. If you need to hide who you are communicating with, there are anonymous remailers, or you can broadcast your encrypted messages over Usenet. Really, these problems were already solved a long time ago, but people thought it was just paranoid to even suggest that the solutions were necessary.

xradionut 13y ago

Meta Comment: Considering that Ars is mining their forum database and pissing off members/subscribers to post tabloid-style shaming articles about the NSA whistleblower, I believe the first step in privacy is to avoid visiting their web site ever again.

Spooky23 13y ago
Actually, their approach was pretty reasonable. Another site did it before Ars did in a more tabloid manner.
- xradionut 13y ago
  As a long term, now former subscriber, I have to disagree with you. It's all about the page clicks today, fuck the users.
clicks 13y ago
That may be, but really... privacy is dead. It is pretty much impossible to not be outed out on every last forum you used to participate in when the whole world has an eye on you. If Ars hadn't done it, someone would have put the pieces together. In this day and age, to ensure 100% privacy you have to _really_ go out of your way. It's difficult for cypherpunks to pull it off, let alone normal users.
untog 13y ago
They used publicly available quotes. Are we not allowed to post any negative coverage of Snowden now?

chiph 13y ago

Hmm. Need to add my public key to my About page. Thanks for the reminder. I wonder if I can add it to my LinkedIn profile?

pandog 13y ago

They appear to take a SHA1 Checksum from an unencrypted (non-HTTPS) website to verify the integrity of the download. Surely if you're worried about the integrity of the file you should also be worried about the integrity of the source website also?

croikle 13y ago
Yep, they're still rather vulnerable. I guess their approach would stop a dumb MitM which just replaces any .exe download. It also protects against the download server being compromised, assuming the original server is fine and your connection is clean. The best way is to check the signature, but that requires GPG in the first place (and trust on the key remains hairy). At least they could serve the site with HTTPS (GPGTools does this right).

annon2003 13y ago

We are now using S/mime and in today's Apple+Thunderbird products it's completely built-in and pain-free. Set it up once and after that all emails get encrypted automatically, you don't even need to press a button. Provided of course that You were able to convince your colleagues to invest those 10 minutes to set it up as well. PGP Was painful because every Mail.app update broke it, not sure about the current state-of-the-art there. But the whole point should be: it is not much of an annoyance anymore! Zero annoyance after installation, Works even on your iPhone etc.

tigerente 13y ago
Since it's latest update from end of March, MacGPG is fully compatible again with 10.8.

snarfy 13y ago

I can't support arstechnica anymore after the hatchet job done by joe mullin against snowden. http://arstechnica.com/author/joe-mullin-2/ http://arstechnica.com/author/joe-mullin-2/ How would you feel if your hacker news posts over the years were trolled into a very personal post about you on hacker news, done by a hacker news employee? The whole thing is creepy.

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untog 13y ago
I'm sorry, but since when has quoting what someone publicly said been a "hatchet job"? 90% of it is quotes of what Snowden said, there's very little commentary. As the article pointed out, his identity on Ars Forums was already outed by Buzzfeed.
- Cushman 13y ago
  The term you're looking for is "quote mining". If you take only the most opinionated parts from a large enough corpus, you can make almost anyone seem like an obsessive radical. It's all the more dishonest for that it claims honesty on the basis of technical truth. (I challenge anyone investigating my past to include this tidbit :)
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IBCNU 13y ago

I'm surprised more people haven't read between the lines: the NSA is in possession of quantum computers and interference based decryption is probably already in standard use. Insiders also have dropped hints the Tor networks is, in fact, a trojan horse. We basically have two * extreme * options: 1) a trusted courier with a sealed envelope (don't underestimate this Game of Thrones like scenario as the US Military defeated itself in the largest wargame in the gulf by using courier, sealed envelopes, and motorbikes) and 2) quantum cryptographic communication. The latter is still only the realm of university labs and down at LANL but I read a paper which stated it's physically possible to pass keys along ethernet cable, but all parties need a device which acts as a gate. This in turn opens up Alice and Bob to traditional decryption methods if they're not air gapped from the web.

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gibybo 13y ago
Quantum computers do not allow you to break all public key cryptography, they only allow you to break the common forms in use today. For some example algorithms that are not vulnerable to quantum computers, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography Also, it would be quite remarkable if the NSA had quantum computers capable of breaking 2048 RSA or PGP keys. Possible, but extremely unlikely.
- IBCNU 13y ago
  Ah, thank you for sharing this. I agree it's unlikely but given some of the * cough * political events as of late it seems more and more likely. Taking off my aluminum foil hat now...
- __alexs 13y ago
  > Possible, but extremely unlikely. It doesn't seem improbable that the NSA are already recording encrypted communications because they are cheap to store and and have a reasonable chance of being broken in the future. They don't even need to break the algorithm for that data to become useful. In particular SSL encrypted web traffic of sites they suspect they might physically raid (or have cooperation with) in future seem like an excellent target. Although hopefully the increasing awareness and deployment of perfect forward secrecy should help with that attack.

druiid 13y ago

I think it not outside the realm of realistic to imagine that the NSA has the ability to break all/nearly all encrypted data with ease. I mean, I have had quite a few friends with PhD level mathematics degrees hired by the NSA. Haven't heard from them in a while, but I can guess at the reasons behind hiring people like them. Basically I would say the question isn't if we should encrypt e-mail (I think we should in general, regardless of NSA spying), but instead what encryption methods (if any) exist that would be beyond the capabilities of the NSA to easily break.

IBCNU 13y ago
New startup concept: 3d printed wax seals!

znq 13y ago

What about Android and iOS? Any recommendations on email clients with a somewhat good user interface and experience?

peter487 13y ago

I am not sure if such system existed in the past or if I read about it in some sci-fi book, but it worked as follows: You generated your key pair. In (almost) every country in almost every city there were “key signers” (basically trusted members of the PGP community). You met with them and they verified your identity and signed your public key. You needed to visit couple of them to get enough signatures to obtain certain level of trust in the PGP community. Once your level of trust was high enough you could start signing keys of other people. Too good to be true I guess…..

narcissus 13y ago
As far as I know, that's pretty much how it used to happen. I do believe there even used to be things called 'key signing parties' which was just a way to get a heap of people to do it en masse. Not to be confused with simply a 'key party', though, I presume.
- joeyh 13y ago
  joey@gnu:~>gpg --recv-keys 2512E3C7 gpg: requesting key 2512E3C7 from hkp server pool.sks- keyservers.net gpg: key 2512E3C7: "Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>" 24 new signatures gpg: Total number processed: 1 gpg: new signatures: 24 KSP's still seem to be alive and well. I'm sure the NSA has long since pulled in this info about the people I met and signed keys with at Linux Conf Australia this winter. (Of course I Have Nothing To Hide.) If you're using any Linux distribution, there is certainly use of the web of trust at many points in the development, build, and delivery chain of its software.

cheyne 13y ago

I'm just using https://www.noteshred.com https://www.noteshred.com to send private messages. I can't be bothered with encrypted email software

tokenizerrr 13y ago

Anyone know why it is that banks and the likes are not signing their emails? Seems like the perfect use-case.

dfc 13y ago
Because the UIs for email encryption suck, few customers would verify the signatures and it would create another avenue for phishing.
lloeki 13y ago
Mine used to (via S/MIME). They fell a year or two ago back to a CYA boilerplate text that reads "email is inherently insecure blah blah blah".

petilon 13y ago

Why do you even want to keep the NSA away? I am more worried about companies such as Intelius than the NSA. Private companies such as Intelius are posting my personal information on the internet. Anyone who knows my real name can search the internet and find out where I work, my home address, my spouse's name, my home phone number and my age. I didn't put any of this information on the internet, in fact I don't even have a facebook account. Private companies collected and aggregated this information and put it on the internet. Some of the information came from public records (for example, home address from property ownership records), but some was very private (such as my home phone number, which is not even in my name and rarely given out). This is a huge violation of privacy and I have no way of stopping it. Anyone that wants to harm me can find out where I live with a few clicks of the mouse. I am not worried about the government spying on me. I am very worried about these for-profit businesses spying on me and outing my information on the internet. Why isn't arstechnica writing stories about that instead?

superuser2 13y ago
>I am not worried about the government spying on me. I am very worried about these for-profit businesses spying on me and outing my information on the internet. Why isn't arstechnica writing stories about that instead? You have the right to a private conversation. You don't have the right to a secret existence. Directory information (like a phone number) is not that private because there's nothing anyone can really do with it besides call you. We don't really recognize a right not to be called. Your phone records, however, lead to information about your friends, lovers, and business dealings. Exposure of that information is a much bigger deal to most people than the mere fact that they exist.

zeidrich 13y ago

I wonder how much the use of methods to avoid detection by the NSA triggers warning flags that puts you under more individual scrutiny. Sure, you can encrypt most things, but then maybe you look suspicious so you get special attention. Can you encrypt everything? Of course not.

kimlelly 13y ago
Maybe. But the real problem is: encryption is really only a short-term solution, we need a more fundamental one, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879308
- betterunix 13y ago
  How is encryption a short-term solution? We want to be able to communicate privately, without having to trust Google or Facebook to respect our privacy or protect us from external threats. The answer is to encrypt our communications. In the case of social networking, we probably need something more sophisticated than just public-key encryption, but researchers are already presenting solutions: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~arielfel/pub/Frientegrity-UsenixSecurity2012.pdf https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~arielfel/pub/Frientegrity-UsenixS... If the government will not respect our privacy -- and frankly, there is no reason to believe they will -- then we need to take matters into our own hands. We need to use cryptography to protect our privacy, so that no matter who comes into power we can communicate privately. That is a long-term solution, one that outlasts the government.

lazyjones 13y ago

First things first. PGP is useful, but pointless on a system that may be compromised/backdoored at any time (e.g. Windows, iOS, Android ... ). So the first - and possibly most annoying - step would be to install a secure OS.

giardini 13y ago
"...a secure OS." And that would be ???
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > And that would be ??? A mostly secure linux distribution booted from a read-only device would be a good start. c't Bankix is such a distribution, made specifically for secure online banking: http://www.heise.de/download/ct-bankix.html http://www.heise.de/download/ct-bankix.html
quasque 13y ago
Please describe how these operating systems could be compromised "at any time"?
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > Please describe how these operating systems could be compromised "at any time"? Targeted, automatic updates by the vendor with a suitable payload.