Email cannot be encrypted at rest

If you just need email forwarding with a custom domain: https://forwardemail.net (creator here)

> Some other providers automatically encrypt messages as they arrive using users’ public keys. That sounds exciting but in practice that means you cannot access your messages using the webmail unless you pasted your private key into a browser, and have it handled by script and a myriad of third party code. Ouch.

That sounds more like an E2E encrypted setup where the email is encrypted by the sender before sending it, and the webmail provider stores a passphrase-protected copy of the private key.

In any case, I'm not sure why "third party code" is the problem here. Would they prefer that webmail providers write their own crypto code? Does that include TLS libraries?

Perhaps they mean "code hosted on third party sites", in which case the reaction should be "Why does your site pull in code from third party hosts (and why don't you use Subresource Integrity hashes)?".

That leaves just one possible legitimate complaint, which is that the webmail server can (selectively) serve malicious JavaScript to users. While that risk is about comparable to the risk of running a native client that periodically checks for updates and automatically installs them, I think that the malicious webapp scenario can be mitigated by something like the clever Bookmarklet Bootstrap trick[0]. That has some usability drawbacks, but those might be fixed by something like Hashlink[1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776456

[1] https://github.com/w3c-ccg/hashlink

False!

Not clear if the author is referring specifically to mail services like gmail here. Full disk encryption would indeed encrypt my email at rest (assuming I'm syncing mail locally on my laptop with FDS turned on).

paper I had an idea for that was mostly done by an undergrad (now a professor)

https://www.acsac.org/2007/papers/161.pdf

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The increasing centralization of networked services places users' data at considerable risk. For example, many users store their email on remote servers rather than on their own client machine. Doing so allows users to gain the benefit of regular backups and remote access, but it also places a great deal of trust in the server. Since most email is stored in plaintext, a compromise of the server also implies the loss of confidentiality and integrity of the email stored therein. Although users could employ an encryption scheme ( e.g., PGP), such measures are not widely adopted, require action on behalf of the sender, and only provide partial protection (the email headers remain in the clear).

We propose an alternative solution that begins with the server encrypting newly arriving email, including the headers, body, and attachments, using a public-key encryption standard. Unfortunately, this approach also prevents users from remotely searching their email. To solve this problem, we present Secure Searchable Automated Remote Email Storage (SSARES), a novel system that offers a practical approach to securing remotely stored email while allowing privacy preserving searching. SSARES uses a combination of Identity Based Encryption and Bloom Filters, revealing little information about search keywords and queries. SSARES remains largely transparent to both the email sender and recipient. We present an evaluation of our system based on our preliminary prototype, and identify areas for future improvement.

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