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Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

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Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#131

Post by dijit »

DanBC wrote: post #120
dijit wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen, this whole "if it's not 100% secure why bother" argument is annoying, we can still make it hard for them. We can, and we definitely should.

It makes it easier for them.

what does? housing mail outside the US? outside of their partner companies or previously breached companies (in the case of google).

I mean, if you have a remote server- it's lawful for them to snoop (by their own law), but it certainly makes it harder, to gain access and maintain access- as these systems may be wildly different and hosts will be varying degrees of paranoid.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#132

Post by toothbrush »

deong wrote: post #128
toothbrush wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, depending on what you're comparing to, i consider mutt a step forward in terms of usability. How long does your search for a specific email take using the Gmail interface? I bet it's longer than using an indexing backend like notmuch or mu locally :)

I generally agree with you (I use a text-based mua myself), but your specific example isn't great. Gmail -- probably rather predictably -- does search as well as or better than anyone in the world, including your local installation of mu. In Gmail specifically, it's instant.

I find the Gmail interface slows down dramatically when i'm in the train without an internet connection. Mu, on the other hand, keeps on trucking.

/s :)

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#133

Post by Steltek »

ta0967 wrote: post #75
Steltek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with which Exchange servers you try offlineimap with. There was a severely bad interaction in Exchange with how offlineimap operates. Exchange used a global database with a small limit (I want to say 2^16) for unique message headers. Offlineimap injected unique headers for synchronization purposes. This quickly led to resource exhaustion and essentially blocked the server.

each email is supposed to have a globally unique Message-Id header, offlineimap or not.

No, this was a unique header name, X-offlineimap-????; not a value. My understanding is the DB table was a list of unique header names.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#134

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

mariusmg wrote: post #100
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that it hasn't really been designed for keyboard-only use. Some features, such as switching folders for instance, seem to require a mouse, or at least I haven't been able to find a shortcut for doing it. It's also kind of hard to avoid accidentally composing html emails - it cannot be disabled completely. I still use thunderbird myself though, as I haven't been able to find a better alternative for Linux. claw…

To switch folders with the keyboard : - install Nostalgy addon - press "g" - type/select folder name - profit$

Perfect! That seems to fix the main issues I have with Thunderbird :). Thanks!

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#135

Post by thanksgiving »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #106
thanksgiving wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer things that need formatting be an attachment such as rtf or pdf leaving the email in plain text. There is no reason why personally written email needs rich text.

Do you apply an extreme minimalist styling to other areas of your daily life - like "there's no need to clothes to be any other colour than gray"? or "there's no need for food to have a flavour as long as it's nutritious". Genuine question. Most people use some form of flourish even in handwriting - an underline, all-caps, increased letter size or spacing, a personally preferred colour; isn't it weird to not have the…

I looked down and I am indeed wearing a plain grey t-shirt. I wouldn't tell people to not wear anything other than gray though. I wouldn't tell people to not eat food and switch to soylent completely. I'm sorry if I appeared to push my viewpoint. That was not my intention. I apologize for my lack of communication skills. I was merely expressing a personal preference.

I just wonder why documents that need rich text formatting can't be sent as an attachment instead.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#136

Post by monochromatic »

insertnickname wrote: post #74
monochromatic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you wind up with plaintext emails that look gross when opened in Outlook?

It is HTML emails that are gross, not plain text.

Fine, but Outlook does not make plain text emails look nice.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#137

Post by leephillips »

eru wrote: post #90
leephillips wrote: post #66

I use mutt because after you learn of its power, other mail clients reveal themselves to be toys. I keep all my active correspondence in my inbox (5773 messages at the moment). With a few keystrokes I can instantly create a subset of my inbox optimized for the task at hand. (People who use toys instead of mutt often advocate an "inbox zero" approach, I understand.)

You can do the same two things with gmail. (There are lots of things mutt does that gmail doesn't, of course.)

What two things?

I'm not an expert on Gmail's keyboard interface. How, for example, can I see all the messages from Joe Zwanizol that are more than 15 days but less than 60 days old, using only the keyboard, in five seconds?

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#138

Post by monochromatic »

insertnickname wrote: post #130
qw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily for the Outlook users. The default setting of my Outlook was to ignore double line breaks and (paragraphs), which makes plain text mails less readable.

It is Outlook that is gross.

Unfortunately, sometimes in the real world we don't all get to always choose our own tools.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#139

Post by mrits »

toothbrush wrote: post #95
nickpsecurity wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you here. Further, I'll add that it being 100kloc and not Thunderbird etc tells us nothing about its security. It will have plenty of flaws that show up when hackers decide it's worth the time just maybe less. I do like simple, console apps for all the security tech I can easily use with them. Doubt the mutt users are doing that outside MAC, jails, etc. But just using mutt is giving up much usability and…

Honestly, depending on what you're comparing to, i consider mutt a step forward in terms of usability. How long does your search for a specific email take using the Gmail interface? I bet it's longer than using an indexing backend like notmuch or mu locally :)

If anyone wants to compare, I just searched my gmail for a project I did back in 2008. It took ~400 ms retrieve and render the search results.

Re: Why Some Security Experts Use Mutt

#140

Post by kjs3 »

douche wrote: post #60
dogma1138 wrote: post #10

Most "Security Experts" are working for consultancy, tech firms, and government agencies so they probably use plenty of other clients. The majority will probably run Outlook since Exchange is the defacto mail-server standard for any organization (that isn't tied to Lotus because 45 years ago the CEO had to sacrifice a goat to appease IBM to spare his 1st born), the rest will probably use Gmail or any other web-based…

> (that isn't tied to Lotus because 45 years ago the CEO had to sacrifice a goat to appease IBM to spare his 1st born) Those blood magic spells seem to be wearing off hard in the last year or so. I've been seeing a huge number of our customers migrate from the Lotus stack to Office365. Of course, IBM has already put their software divisions out in the back yard, and are popping the cartridges into their rifle to put…

Even IBM is moving off Notes for email. It remains to be seen if the "cloud" replacement is an improvement.
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