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I'm a little disturbed by the thing about inbound e-mails being encrypted. That's a "won't read your mail" not a "can't read your mail" solution. If I'm countin

by x1798DE 12y ago

I'm a little disturbed by the thing about inbound e-mails being encrypted. That's a "won't read your mail" not a "can't read your mail" solution. If I'm counting on you to encrypt it before it reaches me, I'm basically counting on you not to read it anyway, so it's just an inconvenience to me to have to decrypt the PGP key. Such worthless solutions shouldn't be offered.

TheDong 12y ago
It is not worthless. It might be misadvertised, but there is value in encrypting data at rest even if it's not encrypted in transit. The main benefit, of course, is forward secrecy. If the government would like to read ed's email and he's using this technology, they can tap the wire or demand the mail host save an unencrypted copy. However, the government cannot read ed's past emails because they're encrypted. Without this, anyone who compromises the server or takes out a warrant can get all past and future emails, not only all future emails. If you want a better solution, simply have everyone who emails you gpg encrypt their messages. If your contacts aren't encrypting your messages there's little an email provider can do other than receive plaintext messages and, in rare cases like this one, encrypt them at rest.
- mike-cardwell 12y ago
  Also, if somebody manages to get access to your email client, they can't just issue email based password resets to get access to all of your other accounts, because they wont be able to read the confirmation emails without your PGP key.
  - x1798DE 12y ago
    I'm not really sure what attack you are envisioning here. If they have access to your e-mail client, they should be able to just lift your account credentials, allowing them to add a new PGP key to the key ring, then issue all the password resets and, if you want, change the PGP key back.
    - mike-cardwell 12y ago
      Not sure why you think "knows username and password to access email" has to mean "has permission to change the PGP key assigned to the account"
- x1798DE 12y ago
  Encrypting e-mails at rest on the server should be done anyway and is nothing to brag about. Obviously there's nothing the e-mail provider can do about e-mail that's not sent end-to-end encrypted - that's just a fact and implying that they can make things somehow safer by automatically encrypting your e-mails as they come in is hiding this fact. That is in fact exactly what's concerning me - whether they are deluding themselves or others into thinking that this is providing any significant security, they're essentially inducing people to use insecure practices. My guess is that while there's some aspects of forward secrecy to the fact that you're using your GPG key to decrypt the e-mails client-side (which is significantly better than ProtonMail's approach, which is basically full-on snake oil), given the fact that a huge proportion of your non-PGP-using counterparties are going to be using Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and GMail anyway, anyone with a warrant will just get the full, unencrypted text of all your communications from them anyway.

by x1798DE 12y ago

TheDong 12y ago

It is not worthless. It might be misadvertised, but there is value in encrypting data at rest even if it's not encrypted in transit. The main benefit, of course, is forward secrecy. If the government would like to read ed's email and he's using this technology, they can tap the wire or demand the mail host save an unencrypted copy. However, the government cannot read ed's past emails because they're encrypted. Without this, anyone who compromises the server or takes out a warrant can get all past and future emails, not only all future emails. If you want a better solution, simply have everyone who emails you gpg encrypt their messages. If your contacts aren't encrypting your messages there's little an email provider can do other than receive plaintext messages and, in rare cases like this one, encrypt them at rest.

mike-cardwell 12y ago
Also, if somebody manages to get access to your email client, they can't just issue email based password resets to get access to all of your other accounts, because they wont be able to read the confirmation emails without your PGP key.
- x1798DE 12y ago
  I'm not really sure what attack you are envisioning here. If they have access to your e-mail client, they should be able to just lift your account credentials, allowing them to add a new PGP key to the key ring, then issue all the password resets and, if you want, change the PGP key back.
  - mike-cardwell 12y ago
    Not sure why you think "knows username and password to access email" has to mean "has permission to change the PGP key assigned to the account"
x1798DE 12y ago
Encrypting e-mails at rest on the server should be done anyway and is nothing to brag about. Obviously there's nothing the e-mail provider can do about e-mail that's not sent end-to-end encrypted - that's just a fact and implying that they can make things somehow safer by automatically encrypting your e-mails as they come in is hiding this fact. That is in fact exactly what's concerning me - whether they are deluding themselves or others into thinking that this is providing any significant security, they're essentially inducing people to use insecure practices. My guess is that while there's some aspects of forward secrecy to the fact that you're using your GPG key to decrypt the e-mails client-side (which is significantly better than ProtonMail's approach, which is basically full-on snake oil), given the fact that a huge proportion of your non-PGP-using counterparties are going to be using Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and GMail anyway, anyone with a warrant will just get the full, unencrypted text of all your communications from them anyway.