ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography • Hacker News Board

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#51

Post by deagle50 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #48

anfedorov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting, in similar vein — https://protonvpn.com/support/macos-ikev2-vpn-setup/

I don't know OSX very well these days. Is that... is that actually installing a new global SSL trust root? Doesn't that mean ProtonMail now can seamlessly MitM all SSL connections on that machine? Please tell me I'm reading that wrong, because I don't recall doing this for ProtonVPN on linux.

In the instructions they ask the user to "always trust" the cert for all use cases, including SSL. If you do that, any app that uses OS certs can be MITMed. It should be enough to trust the cert for IPSec only.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#52

Post by morrbo » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

We use proton for our business mail (small startup The idea is great, works well, and we support it as best we can. However they REALLY need to step up their game in terms of making it easy to manage as opposed to just "moar security!". I put in tickets for each of the aforementioned pain points 6 months ago, and heard nothing back really. I doubt the developers ever got to see them. If they want more money and more users, which i'm sure they do, they need to really step up their game in terms of group management and onboarding.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#53

Post by vinay427 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

brendyn wrote: post #50

I was silly enough to sign up without looking in to it because it was recommended on HN. Then I realised they need this bridge software to connect. I asked about it stating I'd like to build it my self and confirm it is libre software. They just sent back a generic link to a .deb beta file. I had a look and its got this eula.txt with the standard you-have-no-rights. Messaged them again asking what they intended to do…

You could try Tutanota. Their Android app is even available on F-Droid and doesn't use Google Play Services.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#54

Post by mercora » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #22

Off topic I had a proton email created when it was announced & didn't use it. I found out that my mailbox decryption for that email id is not working (not sure how, I use password manager) & I haven't set a recovery email to recover my account. I saw a HN comment earlier telling, the user had recovered their Proton mail account by answering few questions to customer service. I attempted the same, the issue is that I…

it was at least my expectation that they are not able to read your mails after storing them. But apparently i didn't get that right.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#55

Post by ahelwer » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

Love ProtonMail. Over the past few years I've slowly switched more and more of my usage onto it as my confidence in the service grows. Gmail now occupies a similar niche as Facebook in my life, where I keep a vestigial & largely empty account for those few organizations which still insist on proprietary apps (Google groups/docs, Facebook groups/chats) for organization.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#56

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

mercora wrote: post #54

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #22

Off topic I had a proton email created when it was announced & didn't use it. I found out that my mailbox decryption for that email id is not working (not sure how, I use password manager) & I haven't set a recovery email to recover my account. I saw a HN comment earlier telling, the user had recovered their Proton mail account by answering few questions to customer service. I attempted the same, the issue is that I…

it was at least my expectation that they are not able to read your mails after storing them. But apparently i didn't get that right.

They can't, but they know what email ids you received email from & to which email ids you sent emails.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#57

Post by lvh » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

Forbo wrote: post #42

lvh wrote: post #13

X25519 is great, but it doesn’t make Protonmail (really, OpenPGPjs) a net safe communications mechanism. It inherits all of the flaws inherent in OpenPGP, including optional authenticators (which lead to EFAIL), kitchen sink bulk protocols complete with negotiation (did you know your public keys specify what algorithms you like?), lack of forward secrecy, repudiability, et cetera. We should stop using RSA. But RSA is…

Shouldn't it be possible to have the library built in to the browser? I can't seem to find any information on attempts to make that happen, either directly by browser developers or as an add-on.

Sure: that’s WebCrypto. The main problem it solves is that you don’t really want your AES implementation to be in JS which is only a small part of the problem. You still have the problem that the site would be telling you to do with all of that good crypto, and you still need to do key management.

You could do all of this well if WebCrypto was good and you had a WebExtension, or an Electron app, or some other way where you weren’t just going to do whatever the website tells you to do.

(That is not a blanket security recommendation in favor of Electron. XSS does not normally get me RCE.)

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#58

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

wanderfowl wrote: post #45

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

One major issue with the iOS client is that it cannot handle more than one Inbox. So, if you use two accounts (e.g. home and work), you can only be logged in in one at a time, and have to go through the full sign-in-sign-out process each time you want to switch. And my understanding is that the iOS app doesn't actually cache email offline, so it's not terribly possible to work on an airplane, etc. Also, understand th…

Same with Android, only one account in free version. But I think when switched to pro, one can use more than 1 proton mail account in their app.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#59

Post by arghwhat » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #44

This announcement is an example of why I am not using ProtonMail anymore. There are a lot of things they do that sound very good on marketing materials, but upon examination are security theater. For example, they claim, "We have chosen a particular elliptic curve system known as X25519, which is fast, secure, and particularly resistant to timing attacks. It’s simple to implement". However, previously they've said th…

NIST curves like P-256 is generally not considered trustworthy, which is why the general consensus is to use Ed25519 for any elliptic curve cryptography.

Using Ed25519 is by popular opinion the right choice.

However, the concern about their use of indutny's library and the comment you link to is entirely separate. Choosing to have timing attacks for performance in a cryptographic library seems absolutely absurd, and if this is still the case (the comment is from 2017), then that library should be avoided at all cost.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#60

Post by dontbenebby » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #22

Off topic I had a proton email created when it was announced & didn't use it. I found out that my mailbox decryption for that email id is not working (not sure how, I use password manager) & I haven't set a recovery email to recover my account. I saw a HN comment earlier telling, the user had recovered their Proton mail account by answering few questions to customer service. I attempted the same, the issue is that I…

This would worry me more than drama about one algo choice over another. Encrypting the data at rest (even it's not perfect) is probably better than letting it sit around in plain text.

OTOH account hijacking is a well documented[1][2] threat.

I don't like the idea that if I set up a secure password and 2FA someone could call up Protonmail and go "Uh yeah, I use, uh... Hulu? Reset my password please!"

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/techftc/2016/06/your-m...

[2] https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/10/hacker-hijacks-deray-by-...