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Elegant Email Encryption for Everyone?
"The problem is that in order to use public key encyrption, both parties (sender and receiver) must be using something like PGP. Most of the people I correspond with consider encryption either too complicated or too bothersom to use... with its key generation, signing, encrypting, decrypting, exchanging keys and such. There are always non-public-key systems, but that usually requires both parties to use the exact same software at each end. And then there is the issue of everyone using different operating systems (Windows, Solaris, Linux, etc.). And then there is cost involved for any commerical packages. Of course, there is always HushMail and its ilk, but I don't want to be tied to a web-based system.
For people like me and you, encryption is easy. But that's not the case for everyone else in the world. Why is it still difficult? And what is the best solution to date?"
Sylpheed has been able to do GPG for a while, though I only got it going yesterday. I put some [S]RPMs up here
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Compress it. Simple ZIP compression will defeat packet-sniffers looking for keywords or credit card numbers. And the braindead password protection in PK(and Win?)Zip will stop people going the extra step of simply opening attachments. Unzip software is pretty ubiquitous nowadays.
It's possible that the NSA can crack PGP. But they probably can't do it easily. Right now most of the email you send get streamed all over the place in PLAIN TEXT. That means that the NSA can literally search everyone's email for interesting regular expressions. The sys admin at your ISP can do this with your mail as well (and probably not just the sys admin).
Even elementary encryption methods (like rot-13 or reversing the entire message) will defeat these types of random computerized searches. That means that in order to read your email someone at the NSA (or your ISP) would have to actually want to read your email in particular. Instead of being able to use a computer to sift through your private conversations they have to pay some human to do this.
PGP raises the bar another level. The NSA might be able to read your PGP encrypted email, but they probably can't do it easily or inexpensively. They would have to schedule time on their super computers, and it would probably take a considerable amount of time. In fact, it probably would be easier to simply drive down to your house and put a gun to your head and demand the passphrase.
After all, if the NSA really wants to read your mail, you are screwed.
Nope. Every answer I've seen here is looking at it from the wrong viewpoint. Anything that requires application support is doomed from the start. Sure, as soon as something gets into Outlook, it'll be adopted by the world as a whole, but only until the next version, when MS will replace it with something else that's completely incompatible.
The solution is not encrypted email. It lies in the use of opportunistic encryption at the network layer. That way, all traffic is encrypted, whether it contains an email message, a web page, a DNS lookup or anything else.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I've always wondered myself why MTA-to-MTA encryption isn't more prevalent. It's not all that difficult; all you have to do is run SMTP over SSL. There's even a port number assigned for it (465/tcp).
Sending MTA's simply need to try port 465 first, and if they can get an SMTP-over-SSL connection, transmit the mail that way.
The only caveat is, when you trust your privacy to this paradigm, you are assuming that everything downstream from the mail server is secure. This is fine if The Enemy is government-sponsored wiretappers at the major Internet backbones, but if you are afraid that someone's snooping the in-house LAN, you'll have to use something that's integrated into your client program.
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PGPDesktop and PGPFreeware for Windows do indeed hook into, at least, Outlook and Eudora. They make encryption and decription transparent - you have to click the little "Encrypt" thinggie on the toolbar and you're done. Unless it can't find the right keys, and then it'll ask you to choose them.
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In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Have you ever read a PGP public key over the phone?
Have you ever read a PGP public key fingerprint over the phone?
There's no way people would bother unencrypting messages I send them, my friends would say:
.. '
'wtf, just send it normally you paranoid freak'.
The people on my hockey team would say:
'what is this you are sending me?'
my co-workers and bosses would wonder:
'why is he encrypting all his e-mail? hmmm
There's just no way it will ever take off that much until there's a dramatic shift in culture and computer/privacy awareness, and it's not happening anytime soon.
BilldaCat
I believe one thing that's missing is a generalised E-mail HOWTO. Sure there are HOWTOs about lots of specific topics, but someone who just managed to make it through their Mandrake install will still feel a bit lost. Topics that need to be covered include:
In particular, the only way newbies can evaluate the difference between Netscape, Balsa, and mutt is to look at screenshots (assuming they don't just choose whichever appears first in their menus). More handholding is needed!
Aside: And if everyone agrees that mutt is wonderful except for its lack of GUI, why hasn't someone written a front-end?!
Currently, a PGP plugin interface is being added to Mozilla. It should show up in the next release or the one after that. It will allow PGP to be used almost transparently.
Hopefully, this will bring PGP a little closer to the mainstream.
So what. It's a way of speaking. Does the fact that it is primarily associated with blacks somehow make it sacrosanct? Would you feel that talking about any of the following accents being racist?
Southern Drahwl, y'all!
Noo Yawk
Tayxis
Bahstahn (Pahk the Cah)
Valley Girl (fer sher!)
Swedish Chef (Bork!)
Comic-book Guy (Worst Post Ever!)
It's a harmless joke. Get over it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
What are you going to do? Solve a problem like this for everyone you might want to send an email to?
Here's a solution. Make each message a MIME multipart where one part is encrypted and the other is copy in plain text. That way you're sure that the recipient can read it!
load "linux",8,1
End-to-end encryption requires the cooperation of both parties. If they think it's important, they'll figure out a way to make it work. If they don't think it's important, you can't cram it down their throat.
:-)
However, you aren't completely powerless. My system runs qmail patched to support STARTTLS - any outbound mail that connects to another site that supports STARTTLS will be encrypted. I'm twisting the arm of my ISP to do the same thing for my inbound mail. (My inbound and outbound mail follow separate paths.)
I believe that the latest versions of most MTAs support STARTTLS now - either directly or via patches. Personally, I consider this upgrade equivalent to a "serious security bug fix," but your package maintainers may disagree.
This is NOT a complete solution - mail is still unencrypted on the disk, and according to a recent, and totally unfathomable, court ruling once mail is backed up to tape by your ISP it loses all ECPA protection. But it *will* stop packet sniffers, traffic analysis (at the user level), and with a bit more work also allows you to provide host-based authentication in addition to encryption.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
PGP is the logical solution to use at any cost. Maybe you should try explaining the situation to the other party entirely in order for them to understand the importance of privacy, and how far agencies will go to snoop information on all levels.
Something many people didn't hear about Echelon was the fact that it was being used to snoop against businesses by the US in order to position themselves better in foreign and local markets.
[Full Source (10.7)]
Companies turn a blind eye thinking that Encryption is something criminals use because government makes it seem that way. However think about the following scenario: You work for a company who's just discovered an innovation worth millions and you need to keep in touch with others in offices of your company worldwide but do not want anyone capturing your business plans. Whether its government or a competitor, you're going to want to implement security at all costs. What do you use?
Web based services won't cut sending intraoffice mail because the third party (Hushmail) can read it, (see Is hushmail secure?) using PGP is the safest bet by all means.
Maybe what you should do is make people aware of whats really going on, and help them understand the value of importance behind using PGP. And FYI it's simple as all hell to use, my mother is even using PGP (no bullshit either) and she knows squat about computing.
Want Root?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
i nm FX5yP6JQ8AnAn4
Hash: SHA1
The windows version of PGP has a slick little system tray icon. You
click on it and it'll give you a menu that lets you sign and encrypt
or decrypt the current clipboard contents. Works great for webmail or
pretty much anything else (like, this form for example) for that
matter.
In addition, I'd like to complain a little bit. There's an awful lot
of posts on this thread about how great PGP is and how the key
infastructure really isn't all that hard. Why haven't you people
posted your keys to the appropriate section of your user pages? eh?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>
iQA/AwUBOx06D7fXGCgiKZQGEQKuiQCg4VrQbF1vANOzp14
bC4n80/IQRJcBkzE9KPgDrXV
=Yvx3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
The advantage of putting encryption into your MTA is that the envelope is encrypted, not just the body. Plus, client software doesn't have to be modified.
If you are really paranoid, then you of course would want a combination of encrypted SMTP with a PGP encrypted message body, 'cause that provides end-to-end encryption combined with an encrypted envelope while the email is in transit.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
My apologies.
It looks as if HushMail is pretty close to this already.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Quite apart from the question of whether the government's reading your email, the point remains: some messages are private-- just as when you write someone a message using the post, you put it in an envelope so that it can't be read in transit.
Don't confuse privacy with secrecy. A CS 101 textbook on object-oriented design I once read made the distinction memorably: "What you do in the bathroom isn't secret, but it's private."
my plan
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
What about sending encrypted mail as html, surounded by a neologist tag:
t ed_text>
<encrypted>
<a href=public.webased.decoder.org/cgi/decode?encryp
click here to decode</a>
</encrypted>
Encrypted-tag aware mail readers would know to ignore the <a>-tag and to directly decode the target address.
Up side: this reaches html-enabled maillers and all updated maillers. Down side: it leaves rmail and old pine users either executing outragious copy-yank operations or running for updates.
Another up side not to be left aside: it would becode the first actualy useful piece of html-based mail.
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This post was compiled with `% gec -O`. email me if you need the sources
One problem is that, currently, PGP keys require a password in order to use them for signing or encrypting email. People don't consider having to type in a password "easy to use." However, if you create a MUA that remembers the password, you've reduced the security, because now whoever can get at the machine can get at the key. This is the same old tradeoff between security and ease-of-use.
Also, if I understand it correctly, you can really only send an encrypted message to one person at a time, because you're encrypting it with their public key (so that their private key decrypts it). So PGP is not really a solution for, say, mailing lists.
So, even though Mutt has great GNUPG support, and so is relatively easy to use for someone like me, I can't really make use of it too terribly often, except for signing my mail.
What would help a great deal is if the mail could be encrypted between the mail servers, thus limiting snooping to localhost exploits. I know that there are protocols available, but with so many people out there running old, insecure, years old versions of Sendmail, I am rather pessimistic about the rate at which we could get people to switch over (much like IPv6, which will help network security in general with its support for IPSEC). Does anyone know of an MTA-to-MTA encryption protocol which satisfies any (or all!) of these:
1. Mail server agnostic
2. Falls back to cleartext if encryption isn't supported at the other end
2a. Gives a warning on this fallback.
3. Uses existing algorithms, rather than trying to invent a new one, and can intelligently support more than one at once (sort of like SSH with IDEA and Blowfish).
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I agree that this is probably the killer for 100% encrypted email. With as many different people and philosophies as there are out there, there's no way everyone will agree upon a single trusted key repository.
What's more likely to happen is multiple repositories, where people mutually agree to use one. Email software needs to support multiple repositories.
I also think it's kind of funny and sad how unremarkable your comment "we obviously can't trust the government" is. I totally agree, but it's kind of sad that it's such a given. I daresay people would trust Microsoft as a key repository before the government, which is a pretty sad state of affairs.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
IMO, it's a feature that most mailers, especially Outlook, don't include encryption hooks by default. Because then you'd have to explain to Joe User about keys, passphrases, trust, keyservers, and all the other stuff that goes along with that. Especially considering that while you can revoke a key, it never really goes away, and you have a problem of distribution of the revocation certificate.
Besides, what happens when the next Melissa/I Love You virus comes out -- except this one doesn't simply propagate itself, it uses its VBScript and pops up a little dialog box saying, "I forgot your passphrase, please enter it again." No key cracking required, just a little social engineering hack. (Or it could be JavaScript in Communicator, Hotmail, or Yahoo! mail. The language doesn't matter that much.)
As it stands, the people who use encryption right now have to get past the entry barrier to using it, and therefore have at least some idea of why they're using it. It's a feature.
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We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
At some point in the future, practically all communication between devices will at least be encrypted, and not by the application. I don't know if we have to wait for IPv6, or even if it will be ready then, but I know that as an application developer when I open a socket I want to specify the minimum level of encryption I want, the maximum I need, and to be able to get an idea of how secure the connection is. And server certificates should not be a barrier for encryption.
As for establishing identities, I'm sure somebody else will have much better idea (validate against a domain's PK server? a completely centralized repository?)
What, you mean like S/MIME?
It's already there in Outlook (and Outlook Express?)
Assign a number to each letter of the alphabet in order. A=1, B=2, C=3, etc...
Write your messages all in numbers. Snoops will think its something complex, cause lets face it, no one would ever do encryption that simple...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Well, you're shit out of luck. You just described a watch and it's the best solution.
PGP does everything this person asks for and he seems to already know that. Sheesh!
But, yeah, if you can convince Joe Average to go mutt, it would solve a lot of problems.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
In other words, start petitioning those developers to include PGP or some other, better encryption into the next version of their products. Only by convincing them that there's a high demand for such a thing will it ever happen.
Just add something like
keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net
to your ~/.gnupg/options and mutt does *all* the work of verifying/decrypting emails.
Yeah it sucks. More people should use software like mutt. It makes dealing with pgp-signed/encrypted messages so easy. (I hear gnus is really good too, but mutt was much easier for me to learn)
I think the best thing to do is just sign (not encrypt) all your email to your non-crypto using friends. That way they can still read your email, but they'll have to use a pgp aware mua to verify your sig. Hopefully, your friend will eventually be encouraged to use decent software to get this function. Then you're 99% of the way there and you can start exchanging encrypted emails.
Point being: Sign everything!
1/ Email is not encrypted on the client side, but all the "tubes" that transmit information (email client -> smtp server -> smtp server/pop server -> email client) are encrypted. I don't think it's the good way because if one part of the tube is hacked or listened by the governement, the concept is down.
2/ Encrypt messages directly - for instance with PGP. With this method, the "tubes" don't have to be encrypted because the message itself is encrypted. This leads to the problem that the sender's client has to know how to encrypt the message intended to the receivers'client. That means that the sender has to know the receiver publick key before sending the message (correct me if I'm wrong).
So if the free-software community could show the example and imagine a standard common implementation for all the email clients, that would be great and at the same time, that wouldn't be too difficult to implement. We can imagine a very simple protocol that includes users' public keys at the very end of every message, under a standard format for everybody. For instange, somthing like " . Or better (because public keys are generally very long): maybe just an URL to the public key could. Or we can also have a standard that understands all the "fashions" of including the a public key.
So if everybody uses that (through non-encrypted emails at the beginning of the process), the email clients can maintain a list of all the email addresses for which they know a public key = for which they can send encrypted messages. Then, by default the clients can encrypt the messages without any human interaction :-)
Now imagine that Kmail/Evolution/Mozilla-mail/Emacs-mail/Mutt... decide to use that system, beginning to Day D. At date D + a few hours (or a few days for those who don't use much email!), most of the open-source community would communicate through encrypted emails and we could claim "Hey Microsoft users! everybody can read clearly your emails because you use Eudora or Outlook, but inside the free-software community, we communicate with strong encryption!".
Wouldn't be that good? Wouldn't be a demonstration that the entire Free-Software community can impose new concepts, new ways of living the Net?
Ideal what we probably need, is a really good, full-featured, e-mail client with the capabilities of Communicator or Outlook Express, and PGP built-in.
As long as people have to run PGP as a separate program, and then try to hook it in with their favorite mail-reader, it will never catch on.
Most people will say similar things "Oh, I have nothing important" and yet, deep down there *is* an expectation of privacy. Why? Because you do not see the people reading your e-mail! Out of sight, out of mind type syndrome. But put another person in front of their computer and tell them to check out their In/Outboxes from top to bottom and you'll most definitely see the owner jumping right in "What the hell are you doing reading my mail?!!"
:-)
That's the problem...a perceived sense of security and privacy that seems to resist all rationale.
It's the same with other spooky figures...yes, everyone knows, there are bad guys and burglars out there, but most people will continue to assume, that it hit's only *others* (the Susie B.'s from the newspaper), not them.
I propose checkmail.org, where a few thousand random mail messages are captured and put up for general amusement. Then people will get pissed, because, after all, e-mail is private!
Rather than encryption ... consider steganography (or "data hiding").
That is, embedding a message within seemingly harmless text or data. If you send encrypted data, you are immediately attracting attention to yourself, especially since (as you point out) almost no one encrypts email -- if you're not sending plain text, clearly you must have something to hide. And there are ways to get at encrypted data, not necessarily by brute-force decryption, but (for example) by hacking into your desktop and stealing your unencrypted mail files or your private key. Using encryption makes you an inviting target for such techniques.
There are a number of ways in which steganography is done. You can use spammimic, which converts a short sentence into a lengthy document that reads like spam (and has the advantage of being web-based, so anyone can use it). Or you can try embedding messages into images or sound files by changing the LSB of each pixel/sample, which doesn't affect the output. And so on.
If this strategy is employed, you can also encrypt the message prior to hiding, which is your insurance against someone breaking the hiding strategy.
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