There is no way I would trust lavabit again given it's past...
Would you elaborate?
Lavabit Reloaded
141–150 of 240 posts
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#142Any reason I shouldn't sign up right now? edit: Signed up. Half off for life is a sweet deal.
As written in another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13447493 ), one has to give away too much personal information without clear reason. I would suggest to use https://posteo.de instead. They offer anonymous payment by post (I'm just a happy user).
> I would suggest to use https://posteo.de instead. They offer anonymous payment by post (I'm just a happy user).
I glanced at it. It may offer anonymous signup but it uses standard mail protocols. Almost every email Posteo processes for its users reveals their identities.
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are just minor problems. End to end encryption should not be forced upon users, but should be used selectively. You don't want to lose your entire inbox because you wanted to send a few encrypted emails. > The server stores an encrypted index, and the client walks it (requesting parts as needed). It's going to little slower, and a lot more complex but it's doable. How slow would this be with thousands of emails…
> How slow would this be with thousands of emails on a mobile device ? Not that much slower than email is now. A B+tree index of (for example) 1 gb of total content and index is only about 1-2 gigs in size. You could just store that shit on your phone encrypted. Or 1-5 megs of index on your phone, with 2 round-trips for any email/first page search result per word. > What happens if this password got into the wrong ha…
> Overall yes, re-encryption is necessary. But that can be a batch process done while your phone is charging and on wifi over night. Is a drawback, but re-keying always is. But just because you got to change the keys every once in a while, doesn't mean you toss the locks.
Encrypted hard disks utilize a simple scheme whereby the password/key derived from the password decrypts a small set of keys or single key that's just randomly generated, and decrypts the rest of the drive. So, to change the password, all you need to reencrypt are the real keys.
Password -- decrypts --> master key -- decrypts --> rest of hard drive
^^^^^^^^^^
this is what gets re-encrypted on password change
and is small; ~a few KiB
The approach above also lends itself well to supporting multiple passwords. (If you share an account w/ someone, for example, though email has other tools like mailing lists that might be better suited.)
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess that gets rid of all other email as well..
How often do you get email from somebody that you've never gotten email from before?
From every client that a former client has sent my way. 50% of my clients introduce themselves with some variation of "Something happened, Bill gave me your name. Help!".
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I read, he gave up the SSL cert by printing out a hard copy in a tiny font, and when he was ordered to provide a digital copy, he shut down the service. > At approximately 1:30 p.m. CDT on August 2, 2013, Mr. Levison gave the F.B.I. a printout of what he represented to be the encryption keys needed to operate the pen register. This printout, in what appears to be four-point type, consists of eleven pages of…
How big was that key? 11 pages at 4pt is a lot of characters. I wonder what encoding.
Hex maybe?
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if they install the keyboard but the drivers fail? Won't they need the admin password in order to complete the job?
If a keyboard needs drivers other than USB-HID, someone's doing something wrong.
I thought that too, until i bought a cheap netbook that came with windows (7? Student edition? I cannot remember). I plugged in a mouse and windows said it needed to connect to the internet to download the driver for my MS optical mouse. I practically fell out of my chair laughing.
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moxie is not impressed with lavabit as lavabit's entire security model relied on "we totally promise we won't look at your private key." https://moxie.org/blog/lavabit-critique/ >Unlike the design of most secure servers, which are ciphertext in and ciphertext out, this is the inverse: plaintext in and plaintext out. The server stores your password for authentication, uses that same password for an encryption key, and…
Moxie is not impressed with anything other than signal
He lists two projects unrelated to Signal in the article. There is no mention of Signal.
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want encryption, don't use email. That's total nonsense. > Search isn't possible It absolutely is, in both theory and practice. The server stores an encrypted index, and the client walks it (requesting parts as needed). It's going to little slower, and a lot more complex but it's doable. > If you lose your private key, we can't recover your email This is a damn feature. I had my icloud account social enginee…
> > Spam checking on content isn't possible > This is probably your best point. It's definitely harder to do well I think it's possible, just slower and more complex (like search) - and would have to occur upon unlocking your inbox.
I don't think Spam checking should be a concern since most spammers aren't going to encrypt their spam.
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Edward Snowden started a mail service, I'd probably trust it more. If you want to talk about "going to the mat" for people, I think Snowden has made the bigger sacrifice. Moxie and Whisper Systems probably would get my nod too. Perhaps even DJB or Bruce Schnier.
Snowden is not a security expert nor a cryptographer. He used Cryptocat and Lavabit, for instance - he was (like most people) unable to independently assess the quality of their security guarantees and believed their claims.
he has said that he used pgp in his emails with poitras and greenwald because he knew from personal experience that, properly implemented, nsa was unable to decrypt messages protected with it
Re: Lavabit Reloaded
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is smart to not speculate on patents. You have now possibly poisoned everyone reading this thread.
If patent law worked like coodies that comment would be awesome.
The interpretation of IP law, at least internally at many big software companies, does in fact work like coodies. Hence things like "clean room implementations" of algorithms, modules, API interfaces etc.