Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#11

Post by 0x0 » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:41 PM UTC

J_Darnley wrote: post #5

Reminds me on the inverse question I replied to from a few weeks ago: "Ask HN: Someone still using Thunderbird for Gmail in 2015?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10026641 To be honest, I never thought about the possible weakness of the html rendering in most clients. But then I am more concerned about my privacy than security.

How can you have pricacy without security?

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#12

Post by iso8859-1 » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:41 PM UTC

p4bl0 wrote: post #7

sp332 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty easy to install other desktop environments on Ubuntu. I run with xfce because I just need a taskbar to keep track of my terminal windows.

Why bother with the desktop environment at all in that case? You could just install a window manager (I like Openbox but you may prefer a tiling wm) and xfce4-panel, which works pretty well standalone. This has been my setup for years now :).

Good point. But what is a desktop environment anyway (one could argue that you made your own)? For example, Lxde already uses Openbox, yet Openbox is not just the "WM for LXDE".

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#13

Post by tptacek » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:41 PM UTC

I don't know any security experts who do this. I do know a bunch of old-school nerds who use mutt because that's what they got started with.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#14

Post by icebraining » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #8

Another reason is that it spawns a text editor. Typing emails in a text widget without proper editing capabilities can be irritating.

In Firefox, you can use It's All Text! to edit the current text area in a proper editor.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/its-all-text/

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#15

Post by Steltek » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #8

Another reason is that it spawns a text editor. Typing emails in a text widget without proper editing capabilities can be irritating.

I'm rapidly returning to mutt from gmail because the new gmail compose widget is so bloody awful. I use Firefox-Aurora and the compose widget is sluggish, buggy, and the faux-window manager is a terrible paradigm. I'm fairly sure this isn't my aging brain calcifying on me and turning me into "grrr, I hate change": messages not sending when requested (or sending twice), line breaks not rendering, and a generally unresponsive UI.

As a bonus, I can start toying with GPG for real now (for all of my friends and family that will never use GPG?).

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#16

Post by methehack » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:51 PM UTC

I'm not sure I buy the reasoning on "surface area", at least not the specific comparisons in the article. It seems unfair to count Chrome but not Unix. For that matter, shouldn't we count the surface area of everything that touches the email as it hops around, including routers, etc? And isn't that the whole problem with email that the protocol does not require secure transport? So, seems like the only way to make that even vaguely secure is to use PGP (or something) on top, in which case who cares about mutt...

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#17

Post by icebraining » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:51 PM UTC

morganvachon wrote: post #6

I don't use mutt anymore, but I still feel it's a beautiful client, both in its simplicity and its appearance (take the screenshot from the article, for example). I probably should start using it again since I'm transitioning away from Gmail to a traditional mail host.

I use Alpine instead; tried mutt first, but found it abstruse to set up.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#18

Post by jbk » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 8:52 PM UTC

I still use mutt (and default to text), but I don't see anyone else doing this, even in my geek coworkers or friends. So I'm a bit surprised by this article.

I use mutt because it's very very fast, and quite customizable (I maintain a kind of 0-inbox through a set of hotkeys, + spamassin + procmail). To handle numerous mailing-lists with medium volume, it's so far the best I've seen.

I tried many email clients (on Windows, OSX and Linux), but I always come back to mutt, because it's the fastest to handle the high-volume of email I have...

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#19

Post by totony » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #10

Most "Security Experts" are working for consultancy, tech firms, and government agencies so they probably use plenty of other clients. The majority will probably run Outlook since Exchange is the defacto mail-server standard for any organization (that isn't tied to Lotus because 45 years ago the CEO had to sacrifice a goat to appease IBM to spare his 1st born), the rest will probably use Gmail or any other web-based…

You can use mutt with Exchange servers and Gmail servers

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#20

Post by skepticaluchiha » Mon, Sep 07, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

Popular mail clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook are underattack so the "Security experts" use lesser known clients. I do believe GPG should have been mentioned more besides the Enigmail mention since we are talking about security.