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Lavabit's Dark Mail Initiative
- jgrowl 13y agoDonated. Good luck to Ladar.
- nullz 13y ago"sell the sizzle not the steak"
- friendcomputer 13y agoI can't find any information on the "newly developed dark mail protocol." Is this public anywhere? I need more information before I know if I want to donate to support it.
- conorgil145 13y agoTheir website does not contain any detailed information about the protocol. The kickstarter video is the most detailed information I have read/seen on the proposed protocols and general approach. They have referenced a whitepaper several times, but I do not think that it has been published yet. If it has been and anyone knows a link, please share!
- KingMob 13y agoSeriously? It's the first result for "dark mail". http://www.darkmail.info/ http://www.darkmail.info/
- woah 13y agoI don't see any information on that page.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- digitalboss 13y agoThose are the same partners, what are you saying?
- friendcomputer 13y agoPlease show me the spec. Or even a high level discussion of the protocol.
- shazow 13y agoVideo summary: - Lavabit + Silent Circle are starting a non-profit called the Dark Mail Alliance. - Planning to release an open source protocol for end-to-end encrypted email, along with some open source implementations. Expecting feedback from the community to drive the direction. - Sketch of the protocol: Mail body/details is saved encrypted on some server somewhere. Encrypted XMPP message containing URI describing where to retrieve the message is sent to the recipients. Recipient clients figure out how to fetch it and decrypt it. - The protocol is based heavily on Silent Circle's protocol. Functional proof of concept already exists. - There will be several modes of security, default being the most secure, but allowing the user to explicitly scale down on a case-by-case basis (e.g. to abide by regulations and corporate policies). - Sounds like it's backwards-compatible with SMTP, perhaps through gateways. It'll be explicitly marked as insecure. - Ladar's goal is to transition Lavabit from a services company into a software company, using the free/open source business model and offer support services around it. - The protocol will be using "new elliptic curve cryptography we [Silent Circle] developed." They're expecting the encryption methods will change over time.
- skolor 13y agoI seem to remember quite a bit of hubbub recently about how meta-data related to communication could be useful, even if you couldn't get the content of the communication. Now I see a proposal for a "Secure email", which involves giving an additional third party access to that meta-data.
- GhotiFish 13y agoThank you for the summary! >"new elliptic curve cryptography we [Silent Circle] developed." ??? is... this a good idea? I would of thought libraries for this technique abound.
- bigiain 13y agoFWIW, I suspect Phil Zimmermann from Silent Circle is one of the very few people in the world for whom that reservation probably isn't automatically correct… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann For the rest of us - HELL YEAH! Do not develop your own crypto!
- adamnemecek 13y agoIt's been said before but the name seriously needs to change if the initiative wants to get any sort of support from the general public. It's only slightly better than say "pedomail".
- dmix 13y agoSimilar to authoritarian conservative political groups using names like "Freedom" and "Liberty"? They can sugar-coat it however they want but I'm ok with "dark". That is the fact of life in a surveillance-state. In such an environment, one who wishes to communicate in private must do it in the dark.
- nrivadeneira 13y agoAs accurate as it may be, it's terrible from a PR standpoint. The grandmother next door will be less likely to adopt its use if she associates it with darkness/nefariousness. You may be OK with it and understand its true meaning, but this isn't about just you.
- dmix 13y agoThey are creating a new protocol to be adopted and marketed by other email providers (including Lavabit). Those companies can take care of Grandma.
- adamnemecek 13y agoBut why create the friction in the first place? News are mostly about soundbites, do you think that if grandma hears on the news that a defendant is part of the 'dark mail' initiative that she will be sympathetic towards him?
- w1nk 13y agoViewed slightly differently, given that news is mostly soundbites, which is going to be more memorable?
- asdfs 13y agoNeat, but they really need to repeat what's said in the video in the text. Currently it's not amenable to obtaining a quick understanding.
- hadem 13y agoWhat is keeping this service from getting shut down as well?
- dsl 13y agoIt is a protocol, not a service.
- cracell 13y agoHa, that's a pretty bullet-proof way to not get shutdown. To expand a little bit for the less technical readers. This is about developing a new protocol for email, and an open source software package that supports that protocol for people to use it with. So in the end there will be a software package that you could install on a server yourself and use for emailing others using the protocol. Most likely some businesses will use the software and charge users for the service, just like what Lavabit was doing before it shutdown. So you could shutdown one provider, but you'll likely just make several new ones popup. This is similar to the war against bittorrent. You can shut down the trackers and the sites where people find the torrents but new ones will just appear.
- socksy 13y agoI think chances are, the readers of HN already know the difference between a protocol and a service. And the benefit you listed is already one given to email — the reason that lavabit was shut down was because the guy behind it didn't want to provide a service he knew to be flawed, in that the US government could request details about users. The question is, how does this protocol have it built into it in such a way that both allows anonymity and so that providers can pop up in their place, as you say?
- mars 13y agopledged.
- mr_spothawk 13y ago: Whiney warning : I wish they'd put a bit more work into this kickstarter, rather than just dropping a terd on my doorstep. I'm really interested in this protocol, but I can't help but feel like there's a lot of entitlement evident in the lackadaisical approach. : end whine :
- dram 13y agoI like the name didapper mail. A fun sounding duck inspired protocol.
- logn 13y agoI like this project: https://bitmessage.org/ https://bitmessage.org/
- mahyarm 13y agoBitmessage is not very viable for mobile devices unless you offload hash cash to a server.
- logn 13y agoThen there's this, built on top of the protocol: https://bitmessage.ch/ https://bitmessage.ch/ The source code is here: https://github.com/AyrA/BitMailServer https://github.com/AyrA/BitMailServer It's written in C#, which I don't personally like. And there's no mention of which particular 'open source' license it is. But the source code should be informative for a port/rewrite, and maybe running it via Mono is viable. edit: If the DarkMail people happen to be reading this thread, please consider putting your full support behind BitMessage.
- Ihmahr 13y agoI used to support bitmessage, but they were unwilling to fix their gaping security wholes.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- conorgil145 13y agoThey point out that existing email leaks a lot of metadata, but I do not see any proposal to fix that in the new protocol. How would you hide/encrypt/otherwise protect the list of recipients? Someone somewhere has to know where to deliver the message, especially if you will continue to use human readable/memorable email addresses as we currently know them today. You could have the server know the addresses to forward the message and then forget them. However, then the server knows this information at some point and it could be sniffed/recorded along the way. Does anyone know any more details about the specifics of the protocol? How would you minimize metadata leakage if you were implementing such a protocol? I am not sure it is possible to guarantee the recipient list won't be leaked.
- conroy 13y agoI've read over the SCIMP protocol. From their white paper, a sample message looks like this: <message type="chat"from='velma@silentcircle.com' to='daphne@silentcircle.com' id="0FF6CF98-32FE-4EED-9DEF-D66A0E50EA8F"><body/><x xmlns="http:// silentcircle.com">? SCIMP:ewogICAgImRhdGEiOiB7CiAgICAgICAgInNlcSI6IDE1MDcyLAogICAgICAgICJtYWMiOiAiZlp YYURlQ1ljVTA9IiwKICAgICAgICAibXNnIjogIkloT051Sm9kK0Fjb09KQ1prZ0xHQXliSmJjbC9WNzhl cmMrSFY4K1FHcUJ2cEdlb2RaSWZwNTRKVWluU2g0N0lZTjFORkJOaXBjTVdubWlsMXVtbi9pcG5rVk8rd VJZdUJuQjdpZXZEK1pZQzBYV0hHQWQ3WWJtOWRsYkpSd0oyIgogICAgfQp9Cg==.</x></message> which worries me. Yes, the connection between the server and client will be encrypted, but my message still has metadata that isn't encrypted. I'd just like an answer from Silent Circle / Lavabit.
- xanth 13y agowhy dont they address the server and encrypt the user address at the server level, so a network eavesdropper would only see traffic too and from servers but not the particular addresses being addressed. The user puts in an address e.g. yaName@yaDomain.com the sender and receiver address (maName & yaName) are then stripped on sending the D-mail and encrypted with the D-mail servers private key the receiving server (maDomain) then goes through the public private key exchange with the sender (yaDomain) thus securely passing the user address between the two servers without the eavesdropper knowing from what user the D-mail originated and to what user the D-mail was addressed to. This system would become more secure the the greater the number of users on each domain. To add extra security batch sending by the server would make it even more secure e.g. every 3min || when unsent messages to domain x > 999 --> send D-mails. this would add latency and create bandwidth spikes but would negate time based inference attacks. edit: relevant xkcd; http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
- Mithrandir 13y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642106
- conroy 13y agoI'm disappointed with this Kickstarter campaign. One 23 minute video and almost no text explaining the project. The video isn't even made for Kickstarter, it's just the announcement video from Inbox Love. How do they expect to get almost $200,000 in donations with a campaign that looks like it was put together in 10 minutes? I want Darkmail to succeed (and I don't mind the name like many here), but I have serious questions about the protocol and the community, no one which have been answered.
- Simucal 13y agoI couldn't believe that the Kickstarter video was the unedited conference recording. I don't think campaigns need to be exceedingly polished but I do expect a bit more effort than this.
- puller 13y agoFirst shut down Lavabit (for whatever reasons). Then ask for donations to do something else.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gesman 13y ago"Yet another communication system that offers better encryption" is not going to solve fundamental problem. Even if it is named "dark". The communication system that conceals the very act of communication will. The best way to conceal anything is to make others think that it never existed. Pissing off enemies with stronger encryption will just get more people hurt and hunted for.
- moxie 13y agoI think it's important that we separate our support for Ladar's legal problems from our support from his technical decisions. I think we should support Ladar as a person for bravely deciding not to comply with the government's request, but that we should be extremely critical of the technical decisions that lead to his ability to have complied. LavaBit was a service offering "secure" email using a mechanism known to be insecure, which unnecessarily put a lot of users at risk. It seems injudicious to fund its redeployment, and even a little bit strange to fund the same person to develop something new.
- zxlk21e 13y agoAgree, but then again, most of the parroting that has taken place with respect to this entire debacle has served to expose people to many of the issues and practices around online privacy, so there is that (albeit under poor circumstances, but lemons -> lemonade). What's with the weird goal amount though? Is there some significance there that I'm not aware of?
- hkmurakami 13y ago>What's with the weird goal amount though? Is there some significance there that I'm not aware of? It seems to be 2^16 * 3 No idea what that means.
- DigitalSea 13y agoWow, $196,000? That's a lot of cash for cleaning up source code and releasing it, isn't it? My understanding is that the code is merely being modified to work in other environments, right? Finding great talent costs money and time, but surely finding great developers who support Ladar and his quest to release an open source email service wouldn't be that hard? I don't know C that well, but I'd volunteer my time to make the project a success. Something about that almost 200k figure they're asking for doesn't feel right. Am I missing something here?
- steveklabnik 13y ago> Am I missing something here? Yes, watch the video. Or read the comments here with a summary. Even the summary of the kickstarter says more than 'OSS the code.'
- tnorthcutt 13y agoThis Kickstarter campaign reads like a What Not to Do If You Want Your Kickstarter Campaign to Get Funded. 23 minute video that isn't specifically created for the Kickstarter campaign? Check. Very little explanatory text? Check. Reward levels at different price points with identical rewards? Check. Basic spelling errors (their != they're)? Check. Campaign started by someone with a dog as their profile pic? Check. I hope this project succeeds. I don't think this Kickstarter campaign will, though.
- Dylan16807 13y ago>Reward levels at different price points with identical rewards? Check. Come on, that's not fair. This is a kickstarter that gives the normal contributor no rewards. That is an entirely different discussion, and not inherently bad.
- tnorthcutt 13y agoI'm not talking about what's fair/not fair or what's bad/not bad. I'm talking about attributes of successful (or not) Kickstarter campaigns. Do you know of a successful campaign with reward levels at different price points that have identical rewards/text? Do you think that increases the chances of success for this campaign?
- Dylan16807 13y agoI'm saying that your classification of multiple tiers as having the 'same' reward is misleading, because those tiers have no reward. I can't answer your question because I've only paid attention to a handful of kickstarters, and they were product-selling rather than goal-fundraising.
- tnorthcutt 13y agoWhen I used the word reward I used it in the context of Kickstarter. That's the terminology they use: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backer%20questions http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backer%20questions Whether a project creator chooses to provide an actual reward in the sense that most people use the word is up to him or her. I'd wager that electing not to do so is strongly correlated with a project not reaching its funding goal.