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Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

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Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#91

Post by mediumsmart »

mgraczyk wrote: post #83
em-bee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have 2.5 million emails in a 32GB datastore. no mailprovider is going to allow me to store that much mail, and search is actually quite fast. if it isn't for you, then get a better mail client.

Google's cheapest paid plan ($6/month) gives you 30GB. The $12/month plan is 2TB of storage. I currently have over 30GB of email in Gmail and everything works fine.

I have around 17GB of pop3fetchallnokeep in the mail folder and the backup is somewhere in the btreeflatfile heap in that UtahDataCenter free of charge training darkgpt 5.8

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#92

Post by pseudalopex »

amilich wrote: post #12
ssddanbrown wrote: post #7

Their website describes this as open source but their linked repo is under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [1] so not commonly regarded as open source, but instead source available. They have been made aware of this [2]. Additionally, I think it may only be the front-end parts of their apps that are source available, I'm not sure the server-side parts of their app have sources published. [1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-n…

Hello! Yes, we're working on this. Note that our UI, cryptography, and editor libraries are MIT licensed.

Why does the claim remain 3 weeks after admitted false?

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#93

Post by [deleted] »

onereplyac wrote: post #87
amilich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't how it works at all? We don't pay for storage on users devices... buying the device = buying the storage. It's actually much more efficient than doing search through some massive database.

Depends, on an older phone, downloading all emails just to allow for searches locally won't be very efficient. Log out also becomes a problem, if emails are stored on one device that gets stolen, adversary now has access to the local index since all the keys or on the device usually with no FDE. Meanwhile with gmail a log-out would clear all traces instantly.

[deleted]

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#94

Post by wishywashy0 »

tptacek wrote: post #85
amilich wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1

Isn't that what you're Skiff is doing too? It seems like it's just the Lavabit design with a some 2010 cryptography layered on top.

No. Lavabit had fundamental flaws where passwords were sent to the server so anyone who could decrypt the HTTPS traffic could basically access the content [1].

Skiff's password mechanism actually solves this flaw cryptographically using known, established primitives.

We use argon2id to take password and turn it into two cryptographic keys. One key is used for an SRP scheme to prove you have the password in a signing flow that bootstraps session management. The other key is actually the data encryption key. These keys are never sent to Skiff's servers and this generation happens all in the browser.

Lavabit really failed fundamentally in having actual end to end encryption because the password was sent to the server.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/op-ed....

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#95

Post by josephg »

tptacek wrote: post #54
dannyobrien wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but Signal is still a potential adversary, and could roll out a backdoor. A couple of things that are easier in a web-delivered tool is deliver a backdoor to a user or group of users (which Skiff can track), or deliver a backdoor over a particular window of time across many users to decrease the chance of detection. I know Skiff uses IPFS in some of parts of their solutions, and there's something they could do w…

Signal's servers can't backdoor the Signal Client. From what I understand of Skiff, Skiff's servers are the client.

Not directly. They would have to roll out an update with the backdoor to the App Store. But as a user I’d be none the wiser.

I wish there was some way on iOS to prove that some particular version of an app was built from a certain git hash. That way these sort of attacks would be easier to detect.

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#96

Post by onereplyac »

wishywashy0 wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what you're Skiff is doing too? It seems like it's just the Lavabit design with a some 2010 cryptography layered on top.

No. Lavabit had fundamental flaws where passwords were sent to the server so anyone who could decrypt the HTTPS traffic could basically access the content [1]. Skiff's password mechanism actually solves this flaw cryptographically using known, established primitives. We use argon2id to take password and turn it into two cryptographic keys. One key is used for an SRP scheme to prove you have the password in a signing…

That's all moot though, since your server has access to plaintext emails when sending and recieving (99.99999% of email addresses would be outside skiff), which completely subverts the whole point of encryption. A vulnerability on the server could leak all user emails, without needing their keys.... This is a solution theoretically only as strong as encryption at rest.

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#97

Post by Scottn1 »

thecodeboy wrote: post #64

How has Skiff's email deliverability been? I'm curious if your emails go to spam more frequently, being a smaller player in an established hegemony. You have a generous free tier which may attract spammers. How do you deal with IP reputation?

I opened an account at Skiff a few weeks ago and have used it in limited amount since then. But sending an email to my outlook.com address and my wife's gmail they both went right to inbox on first try. That was pretty impressive considering some long established email providers still go right to my spam at times.

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#98

Post by pseudalopex »

onereplyac wrote: post #87
amilich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't how it works at all? We don't pay for storage on users devices... buying the device = buying the storage. It's actually much more efficient than doing search through some massive database.

Depends, on an older phone, downloading all emails just to allow for searches locally won't be very efficient. Log out also becomes a problem, if emails are stored on one device that gets stolen, adversary now has access to the local index since all the keys or on the device usually with no FDE. Meanwhile with gmail a log-out would clear all traces instantly.

All common operating systems can encrypt keys or full disks.

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#99

Post by amilich »

onereplyac wrote: post #87
amilich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't how it works at all? We don't pay for storage on users devices... buying the device = buying the storage. It's actually much more efficient than doing search through some massive database.

Depends, on an older phone, downloading all emails just to allow for searches locally won't be very efficient. Log out also becomes a problem, if emails are stored on one device that gets stolen, adversary now has access to the local index since all the keys or on the device usually with no FDE. Meanwhile with gmail a log-out would clear all traces instantly.

Emails are downloaded when you receive them. Isn't that how email works?

Re: Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

#100

Post by amilich »

onereplyac wrote: post #87
amilich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't how it works at all? We don't pay for storage on users devices... buying the device = buying the storage. It's actually much more efficient than doing search through some massive database.

Depends, on an older phone, downloading all emails just to allow for searches locally won't be very efficient. Log out also becomes a problem, if emails are stored on one device that gets stolen, adversary now has access to the local index since all the keys or on the device usually with no FDE. Meanwhile with gmail a log-out would clear all traces instantly.

Also, not really true of Gmail. Try turning your WiFi off, then deleting your Gmail account. You might have mail stored offline on your phone (let alone any other device), as well as any IMAP or other clients. It's the same or worse.
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