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ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

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Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#21

Post by mtgx »

infodroid wrote: post #17
zokier wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can we know it does what it says it does? How does being open source help with that?

Open source makes it is easier for security experts to review the code and determine whether it meets its security claims. If it is closed source, then there is no guarantee that the code the experts review is the same code that is used by the service. And also it is at the company's discretion whether to allow a security audit or not, and then which auditors to allow or exclude. But if the whole of the client softwa…

That, also the fact that if they have it in their privacy policy and website, then we can call them out on it when they insert a backdoor or remove the encryption. We can't say the same about Whatsapp and its end-to-end encryption, because they never even publicly admitted to using it. How can we ever hold Whatsapp responsible for not using end-to-end encryption then?

We can do that with Protonmail.

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#22

Post by rdl »

mtgx wrote: post #20
junto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll do what they did to Wikileaks. The USG phone Visa and MasterCard CEOs and threaten the shit out of them personally. Suddenly you lose the ability to take credit card payments. You can turn to Bitcoin, but that's like trying to quench the hunger of a million people with one faucet. Plus if you are an American then it doesn't matter where your servers are hosted. The men in black suits are going to be knocking…

> The USG phone Visa and MasterCard CEOs Don't forget Amazon. Never forget Amazon: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-websi...

I wonder if they'd ever go after corporate principals in ways calculated to annoy. I'd be fine with losing AWS access, but if they made it so I couldn't buy books/toilet paper from Amazon because I worked for/etc a company they hated, it'd be really annoying.

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#23

Post by rdl »

There are lots of drawbacks to an SMTP based service vs. something built on a newer protocol with client-side crypto everywhere, but email has a huge installed base. This becomes a question of "good" vs. "perfect", but it might also be a question of "too dangerous to use" vs. "replacement" -- depends on threats, alternatives, and quality of implementation.

I know one of the people at Proton Mail pretty well, and have met the others. Of all the companies doing secure email right now, they seem like the best.

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#24

Post by moxie »

Some bad signs:

1. Hosted in Switzerland is advertised as a security feature. The point of e2e is that the servers are untrusted. If you need a "good jurisdiction" for your servers, it means they must be trusted. That's a problem, because sadly there are no good jurisdictions in today's world, and your jurisdiction doesn't help you if your servers are hacked.

2. It's webmail. That means the security of whatever e2e they're doing is based on the security of SSL. If you break SSL, you can break whatever e2e they're doing, and that means your e2e security is only as secure as the CA system.

3. Their 'threat model' documentation leads with: "From a high level, our premise is that a service like the now-defunct Lavabit does add value, despite some inherent weaknesses. We designed ProtonMail around many of the same principles..." Given what happened with Lavabit (the eventual compromise of everyone's email despite shutting down the service), considering it to have been "valuable" should really be off the table at this point: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/lavabit-critique/

I can't find much in the way of technical documentation for ProtonMail, but from what little is available, it does seem that (much like Lavabit), the service is built on the premise of "won't" read your mail rather than "can't" read your mail.

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#26

Post by rdl »

moxie wrote: post #24

Some bad signs: 1. Hosted in Switzerland is advertised as a security feature. The point of e2e is that the servers are untrusted. If you need a "good jurisdiction" for your servers, it means they must be trusted. That's a problem, because sadly there are no good jurisdictions in today's world, and your jurisdiction doesn't help you if your servers are hacked. 2. It's webmail. That means the security of whatever e2e t…

Even with e2e you have availability concerns, so picking a "good" jurisdiction makes sense. The rest of your criticisms are completely valid -- webmail is never going to approach the security of true e2e client crypto.

The best possible system for webmail would be a browser extension or in the far future world, some kind of browser security extensions. Failing that, there's probably value in "best effort" secure webmail if users are explicitly aware of the limitations. The problem is even developers aren't really aware of the limitations (since they vary with threats and per user), so this is probably not a realistic goal.

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#27

Post by brightball »

hackuser wrote: post #25

A few critical questions: 1) How are spam filters implemented if they can't access the content? 2) How is metadata protected? 3) Also, can I use POP/IMAP and store my mail locally, or must I trust them with my data?

1) Seems to be that its stores encrypted but on arrival would still be scannable just as on send it would. Without the people sending to you or receiving from you having a key there's not much that can be done about it.

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#28

Post by jboynyc »

hackuser wrote: post #25

A few critical questions: 1) How are spam filters implemented if they can't access the content? 2) How is metadata protected? 3) Also, can I use POP/IMAP and store my mail locally, or must I trust them with my data?

Regarding 3, no, there is no protocol to store mail locally. You have to use webmail or one of their applications.

https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/imap-smtp-and-...

Re: ProtonMail's encrypted email is now available to all

#30

Post by farfromright »

rdl wrote: post #26
moxie wrote: post #24

Some bad signs: 1. Hosted in Switzerland is advertised as a security feature. The point of e2e is that the servers are untrusted. If you need a "good jurisdiction" for your servers, it means they must be trusted. That's a problem, because sadly there are no good jurisdictions in today's world, and your jurisdiction doesn't help you if your servers are hacked. 2. It's webmail. That means the security of whatever e2e t…

Even with e2e you have availability concerns, so picking a "good" jurisdiction makes sense. The rest of your criticisms are completely valid -- webmail is never going to approach the security of true e2e client crypto. The best possible system for webmail would be a browser extension or in the far future world, some kind of browser security extensions. Failing that, there's probably value in "best effort" secure webm…

Would you care to comment on Cyph [1]? They claim that they are able to approximate client side programs that provide e2e but in a non-plugin browser environment [2]. I know tptacek doesn't like it but he wasn't willing to go into a detailed account of why.

[1] https://cyph.com

[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XVh4ALXhbfxi70QSUY-xHcla...

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