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Helm: Personal Email Server

thehelm.com

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Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#571

Post by gsreenivas »

lrvick wrote: post #345
gsreenivas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey jawns, great question. I'm Giri Sreenivas, co-founder and CEO of Helm. To answer your question, ISPs block port 25 and email service providers typically reject emails coming from residential IP blocks. To build a plug and play solution, we knew that our server could not require listening for inbound connections on a residential internet connection. So we set about looking into how we could route traffic to and fr…

But you pay for this EC2 instance, and all traffic flows through it. Honest question: What stops a malicious employee on your end sshing to this server and dumping plaintext messages from memory? What stops a court from ordering you to do that? Even if you disable remote access, what stops someone from adding a new LaunchConfiguation that enables it silently on the next instance rotation in spite of whatever configur…

Because traffic to and from the server will be over TLS, there won't be plaintext messages in memory on the gateway. We specifically designed to avoid the problems you have outlined.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#572

Post by jakejarvis »

gsreenivas wrote: post #561
Taranli_Maren wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not entirely true. Perhaps in the stated configuration it is, but since the domain points to the EC2 instance, you could always register a new LetsEncrypt certificate for it, and do a silent MITM. Perhaps the architecture you describe is the best, however I would hope for two things to be supported: 1) The ability to run your own gateway server instead of having to trust one managed by your company. 2) The ab…

It's possible but not something we would ever do. We are looking at STARTTLS Everywhere from EFF as means to help ensure that any cert changes would be tracked transparently. #1 is something we will support via open source.

If running our own gateway server on a cloud provider of our choosing will really be an option, that might sell this for me. Would that remove the yearly $99 requirement? I understand we wouldn’t get support for a lot of the things you handle transparently behind the scenes blacklist/DNS-wise.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#573

Post by gsreenivas »

lvh wrote: post #565
gsreenivas wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it's forwarding packets to/from the Helm server in the home

But that's IMAPS and SMTP submission. Is that for random hosts on the Internet (like my phone on LTE) to read/send e-mail?

Yes - these ports are forwarded so customers can reach the server in their home from anywhere in the world.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#574

Post by gsreenivas »

specialp wrote: post #94
gsreenivas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey jawns, great question. I'm Giri Sreenivas, co-founder and CEO of Helm. To answer your question, ISPs block port 25 and email service providers typically reject emails coming from residential IP blocks. To build a plug and play solution, we knew that our server could not require listening for inbound connections on a residential internet connection. So we set about looking into how we could route traffic to and fr…

If you are proxying the content with a VPN with a static IP on an EC2 instance you cannot police people sending out spam as you cannot see and meter the SMTP traffic. So does everyone get a dedicated instance and IP? If that is the case people are going to have issues getting their email accepted by almost all providers due to the IP being new and on a cloud provider block. If it is a subset of IPs that you create a…

There's an easy way to make Helm entirely uninteresting to spammers and that is for the server to limit the number of outbound emails that can be sent at a number that normal people would never exceed but that doesn't allow enough volume to be interesting to a spammer. There are much easier/cheaper alternatives for spammers today too.

Thanks for the question and your support!

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#575

Post by ti_ranger »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #175
specialp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can send email from an EC2 instance but good luck getting anyone to accept it. A lot of email providers block EC2 wholesale, or if they do accept it you are going to have to have a long standing reputation.

What do you mean by blocking "wholesale"? I started hosting an email server in EC2 and the worst I've had is my emails going to a spam folder if that person hasn't received an email from my address yet (and never after they've marked me as not being spam). That happened surprisingly rarely and didn't feel like much worse than I would get by just sending people email from gmail with an address they don't know. I don't…

> I guess I should be clear that I have an elastic IP (which is free)

Free when in use, you pay for it when it is not in use.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#576

Post by [deleted] »

gsreenivas wrote: post #480
woodrowbarlow wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if your company folds and the cloud service goes offline, does that render my helm useless? that wouldn't make me feel like i "own [my] email".

Two things: we will run the service in perpetuity as long as there are subscribers and we will be open sourcing what is required to run the service on your own.

[deleted]

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#577

Post by lolc »

lvh wrote: post #570
lolc wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The odds that someone compromises a Helm update and the odds that someone walks out of us-east2a with a drive are not in the same ballpark. Sure, but why are you comparing a software compromise against physical access? There are attacks that work against cloud providers which don't work against Helm. If somebody can compromise a Helm update they essentially got root. And that is a step up from just read access to s…

Because we started talking about FDE specifically?

I don't get why you're so hung up about physical access. But at least I think I understand how we got there:

gsreenivas: Most cloud-based email services hold email in the clear

lvh: are you suggesting cloud e-mail services don't use FDE?

lolc: They may but they also hold the keys.

lvh: it's a lot easier to walk out with a box in my kitchen than it is to walk out with a drive from us-east-2a

lolc: How many people have access to drives in us-east-2a?

In that last quote I should have said "storage", because I didn't mean physical access only. So apologies if that set you on the wrong track.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#578

Post by blablabla123 »

lolc wrote: post #568
blablabla123 wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific?

The original post was about the perils of hosting your mails at home. I'm not clear what your answer is about. For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work. You say it's not a problem with a charged battery and LTE. I think you're talking about a cell phone and I don't understand how that's related. Sure, one could run Helm on a UPS with LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against the promised simplic…

> For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work.

I mean you can connect it to a Uninterupptible Power Supply "USP".

It's not clear if they have a high power USB connector to connect USB batteries, however:

"Built-in battery backup for safe shutdown

On mode: 10 W

Standby: 0.4 W"

(https://thehelm.com/pages/technology)

> LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against

> the promised simplicity.

There are low-cost routers with USB ports that allow plugging in an LTE stick.

> Also I don't see how encryption prevents the device from

> being physically destroyed.

You can create a backup and store it on an untrusted storage (cloud for instance).

I'm surprised these devices didn't take off 5 years ago already, as this is technology wise almost a step backwards into the 90s. But I think it's worth it, and in fact you don't need helm to set up a system like this yourself. Get a Raspi, stuff an LTE stick and a juicy USB storage into it together with external USB-battery in passthrough and you even have a superior device.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#580

Post by lolc »

blablabla123 wrote: post #578
lolc wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original post was about the perils of hosting your mails at home. I'm not clear what your answer is about. For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work. You say it's not a problem with a charged battery and LTE. I think you're talking about a cell phone and I don't understand how that's related. Sure, one could run Helm on a UPS with LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against the promised simplic…

> For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work. I mean you can connect it to a Uninterupptible Power Supply "USP". It's not clear if they have a high power USB connector to connect USB batteries, however: "Built-in battery backup for safe shutdown On mode: 10 W Standby: 0.4 W" ( https://thehelm.com/pages/technology ) > LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against > the promised simplicity. There are lo…

You are introducing a lot of moving parts to go from 99% to 99.5% availability. And you can't get much better than this at home. In that vein, for most people, the availability of a Raspi solution would be 0%. They just can't handle it.

If you can accept the bad availability Helm looks like a fine solution to get your mail out of the cloud.

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