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Only the public key should be stored on the virtual mail server, since all it's doing is encrypting incoming mail. It's your local email client (e.g. Thunderbir
by tga_d 13y ago
Only the public key should be stored on the virtual mail server, since all it's doing is encrypting incoming mail. It's your local email client (e.g. Thunderbird) that then downloads the encrypted emails to your local machine and decrypts them with your private key. Signing and outgoing encryption are also done locally. At that point, all that someone raiding your VPS gets is a bunch of encrypted messages, which good encryption is supposed to make worthless, and your public key, which they should already have (along with everyone else).
Sure, your local machine could also be raided and the keys grabbed from that, but that's not a problem with using a VPS so much as a problem with your local setup.
- benedikt 13y agoWhat about the VPS provider being coerced into logging network traffic to the VPS? Then incoming un-encrypted mail is compromised..
- rst 13y agoThis is pretty much the reason that Silent Circle shut down their email product. Their other offerings use custom protocols with full end-to-end encryption (and are still up and running), but for email, they were trying to interoperate with the legacy stuff, which left them handling plaintext in some cases. It's also the focus of some of the speculation about the unknown demand that triggered the Lavabit shutdown.