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> They now need not implement any cryptography. This sentence implies to me that under the current system, sites need cryptography, because sending login infor
by lkbm 13y ago
> They now need not implement any cryptography.
This sentence implies to me that under the current system, sites need cryptography, because sending login information in plaintext is not secure enough.
...and that the solution is to use email, because we already treat it as if it's secure.
...even though it sends the data in plaintext.
Okay, so most end-users probably accesses their email via https these days, but it's a (potentially) long journey from the website to the email provider's server.
Is any of that server-to-server journey ever encrypted? I'm no expert, but my impression has always been that it's not.
- prutschman 13y ago> Is any of that server-to-server journey ever encrypted? It can be, thanks to RFC 3207 (STARTTLS). However, unless you configure your sending MTA to require TLS (and in turn give up the ability to send email to a large swath of the internet) you have no protection against a MITM adversary hiding the recipient's advertisement of STARTTLS.
- betterunix 13y agoA key difference here is that the proposal is to send a short-lived login token via email. Even if this is intercepted the attacker will not be able to do much before getting caught -- the window is going to be less than a minute. After that the token is a cookie stored on the user's computer. It is also worth pointing out that a number of sites allow passwords to be reset via email, and so an attacker who can read your email can potentially gain access anyway.