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Mailpile – taking e-mail back

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Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#131

Post by px43 »

moxie wrote: post #52
harrytuttle wrote: post #4

How many times do people have to say this: There is no such thing as secure email. Assume everything is being read. You can't bolt security on (SSL, mailbox encryption, PKI). You have to design it in from the start. SMTP/IMAP etc have crudely hacked on TLS implementations which aren't even guaranteed to be operational site to site. PGP is just an encapsulation which is rarely used. It's a mess. This is just a repacka…

I don't think Mailpile is potentially valuable because it immediately solves the encryption problem, but because it solves the MUA problem. All innovation in the secure email space has been blocked for the past 13 years by one primary problem: webmail . It is simply not possible to develop a secure email solution if webmail is the only viable option for accessing mail, so most people who would be interested in innova…

Have you looked into systems like Mailvelope? (similar to what FireGPG once was)

Private keys are kept in the domain of a browser extension, so even if your webmail provider served up malicious javascript (via xss or court order), they would not be able to directly read the contents of your emails since they are being encrypted/decrypted in a separate domain.

Ideally the crypto APIs in browsers would work nicer with hardware tokens etc, but until then, at least people can start moving towards GPG without having to trust large, scary, poorly maintained email clients like thunderbird and evolution, which tend to segfault with a terrifying frequency.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#132

Post by bane »

Maybe the better solution is a completely new distributed delayed messaging system that works just like e-mail, but fixes all the crustiness and problems that we know about these days.

There's very little that's more demoralizing then spending months cultivating a relationship with somebody in a company you want to work for, getting glowing recommendations, prepping yourself diligently for the interview then showing up to a cattle call where half the interviewers can't even be bothered to show up and the recruiters are a blind mess the entire day.

You aren't even being treated with basic human dignity at that point, there's no respect for your time and you've just wasted a good deal of effort to get into a hiring process where the candidates are selected for non-interview talents anyways...like what school they graduated from or the roll of some dice.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#133

Post by malandrew »

cdjk wrote: post #106
malandrew wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we also make a server that is physically hardened against tampering? If servers get small enough and cheap enough and only need to support one individual, then you can always try encasing that server in some material that is physically difficult to penetrate without risking destruction of the server itself. i.e. encase the server in concrete or opaque resin with a thin lead shielding to prevent x-raying of the…

It's called a hardware security module (HSM) [1]. The basic idea is to store the private key in the tamper-resistant hardware, along with a microprocessor to perform the basic encryption options you need. They can be relatively cheap, like a smart card + usb smart card reader, to very expensive, like an IBM 4764. Yubikey sells a usb HSM if you want to run your own authentication server for around $500. There's a whol…

Cool info. Upvote.

As far as some of the issues you raised like battery replacement, I would treat them as disposable. In the next few years a complete computer will be available for so little that we will consider it disposable. Prepare a server once, enclose it, make sure the only way in or out is an SSH connection. When it's time to set up a clone to replace it, clone everything via an SSH session and trash the first server.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#134

Post by balabaster »

harrytuttle wrote: post #4

How many times do people have to say this: There is no such thing as secure email. Assume everything is being read. You can't bolt security on (SSL, mailbox encryption, PKI). You have to design it in from the start. SMTP/IMAP etc have crudely hacked on TLS implementations which aren't even guaranteed to be operational site to site. PGP is just an encapsulation which is rarely used. It's a mess. This is just a repacka…

Agreed, I've been trying to consider an end to end solution. A single site by a single company is a bad idea... easy to shut down... PGP encryption at the client requires delivery of public keys from the desired recipient, but potential man-in-the-middle attacks mean you can't even trust that the public key you're receiving is from the recipient you think it does, your mail server could act as a go-between on behalf of your client software to go get the public key for the recipient, but that's not safe either. In the end, when nothing electronic can be trusted as sacred, how do you encrypt in such a manner as your recipient can decrypt it reliably without it being insecure... plus, if you encrypt messages end to end, how do you handle the issue of SPAM?

There are many challenges to overcome and basically as you stated, the whole concept of email needs a complete overhaul. It needs to be secure, distributed and open source.

Unfortunately, much as I'd like to claim the expertise to be able to put all this together, I would need a team of experts to help me solve the problems any solution is going to face and get it to market. This is by no means a one person job, the challenges are hard-to-solve problems and the solution needs to be usable. The reason that nobody encrypts their email now is because the payoff isn't worth the headache of trying to understand what needs to be done. I'm struggling to understand what I need to do to get GPG installed on my computer for crying out loud.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#135

Post by roryokane »

brown9-2 wrote: post #129

So there are no actual "perks" for the $1 and $8 contribution levels listed under the "Select a Perk" table? $1 Binary E-mail User: You're part of the revolution, baby! - the revolution that started in the 1960's with the creation of the first e-mail systems. $8 Futurist Telegrapher: Having not spent a dime on webmail for the last decade, you've realized that the telegraph operators of the world have been keeping cop…

They get nothing. I think those “reward” levels are just a cute way to trigger anchoring (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring) and make the job of choosing how much money to give easier by suggesting some choices. In fact, the $13 contributors don’t get anything extra either – they get “access to Mailpile's online source code”, but that’s already available at https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#136

Post by soapdog »

Genuine question: If this is open source, how come USD23 gives you access to source code?

I think this is a great product and will contribute but I could not understand this part the about source code

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#137

Post by balabaster »

sorbits wrote: post #45
harrytuttle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNSSEC+DANE is fine and all that, but that's another layer of hack job on top of another lacker of hackjob. It's turtles (or turds in this case) all the way down. The fact that a simple delivery stack turns into a mish-mash of SpamAssassin, virus scanning, DKIM, DNSSEC, DANE, SPF, PGP, certificates, CA's, numerous ports open, severla products and many more TLA's is the problem. Complexity does not breed security.

Why is it a hack job? I would say it’s patching a hole, and it’s the feasible way to make email secure, rather than throw it all out and convince the world to switch to a new system. Most (internet) standards evolve this way. That’s the curse of evolving a standard that is already in widespread use.

Mostly because it rests on CA's and if the government can compel the CA to give them a signed cert for something that your security relies on, all they have to do is pose a MITM attack and you're blissfully clueless that they're spying on you. The whole system is broken and if you don't fix the foundations upon which your house is built, no amount of band-aids are going to keep the walls standing.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#138

Post by aidos »

ghc wrote: post #58

Okay, so we're crowd-funding an email client now? Is there any reason to not just put up all of my random project ideas on indiegogo and see if they get funded? If I'm having trouble financing the development new features for my SaaS application, should I just create a funding project for it? Because I'm really not seeing the difference between that and this...I wish someone could explain this phenomenon to me.

Well, we're crowd funding an open source email client. Maybe it's not how these things have been done in the past but I'm happy to pay in advance to get someone to else to do most of the build. I can hack on it once it's more mature and stable.

If you have a SaaS app that's not open source and you're making money off then it's probably not going to be so successful in the crowd-funding arena - but you're still welcome to try.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#139

Post by gwu78 »

kylec wrote: post #118
gwu78 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the need to sell hardware? I can accomplish what AdTrap does using a USB stick or SD card and any old i386 hardware I might have lying around. You might call this a "System on a Stick". It boots from the USB/SD media and runs in RAM (no hard disk is needed). You set your other devices (running your favorite graphical OS's) to use it as a gateway/router. It can block ads. Easily. I do this via DNS and it works lik…

There are certain advantages to custom hardware. For example, the OS could be flashed onto a tamper-resistant ROM to prevent it from being surreptitiously altered. The device could include a smart card slot used on boot to decrypt the storage mechanism. And the device itself could be very small, light, low-power, and fanless, perfect for stashing out of the way next to your modem. There's also advantage in offering u…

All good points, none with which I would disagree.

The System on a Stick could only be surreptitiously altered by remounting the root device as read-write. This is difficult for any non-technical user to do without instructions.

The System on a Stick is fully preconfigured. Insert Stick, turn on computer and away you go. It is every bit as easy as a new piece of hardware with its OS and configurations flashed on ROM.

I do not see a small, low power, fanless device as being incompatible with a System on a Stick. Plug computers or credit card sized computers should have slots for USB sticks, SD cards or CF cards. And they should be able to boot from them (no on-disk bootloader needed).

Not every consumer may be ready to make a purchase of new hardware. Evidence of this is the fact there are a suprising large number of people still using what we would consider "old" hardware. Desktop PC's in fact. Regardless of a consumer's appetite and budget for new gadgets, certainly they can afford a USB stick, SD card or a CF card. They probably own one already. They might even have a CF card left over from the days when digital cameras used CF cards. The System on a Stick will fit on a 16MB card.

I would imagine most people indeed currently have some i386 hardware, either a PC or a laptop. Thus they have what they need to try out the System _right now_, without making a new hardware purchase. When they eventually make their next hardware purchase (maybe an ARM tablet), they will then have spare i386 hardware.

As the System can run without touching the disk, there is no install anything. It can be used on i386 with OSX or Windows installed without affecting those systems. A user can perform tests of end-to-end connectivity and communications using any smartphone with a web browser.

I like the sound the AdTrap Kickstarter project. An additonal computer ("router") that sits between the user and her modem is I believe the right way forward for solving problems of privacy (e.g. blocking ads) and security (e.g. secure communications), not to mention other increased functionality. I simply wanted to point out that purchasing new hardware is not necessary to get started.

Whatever shape or form that router takes, I think it must be bootable from external media with the bootloader of the user's choosing. Any less means we are purchasing yet another closed system and putting someone else in control. By all means make this router function without any user input (turn it on and you're done). But by no means should the ability of the (more conscious) user to fully control the router be limited. That means open source OS and open source bootloader.

Re: Mailpile – taking e-mail back

#140

Post by balabaster »

harrytuttle wrote: post #12
modoc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what Mailpile is doing? Basically making PGP easy to use which solves the lions share of the issues at stake here with the NSA and your complaints.

Yes. Being a bit Theo de Raadt here, but it's a stupid proposition which makes security guarantees that are disingenuous. a) This assumes that everyone is going to be using Mailpile or something which makes PGP easy to use. This is unrealistic. The moment you fart out an email to gmail, it's useless. b) this assumes people actually understand PKI. This is unrealistic. Most people can't even manage their own data let…

@Harry I've drawn the same conclusion, the only secure method is MUA to MUA... it seems like you're on the same wavelength. We should talk. How can I contact you?
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