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I think what's telling here is that the blog post does not point to Protonmail's own threat model. https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-threat-model/ https:/
by zabuni 9y ago
I think what's telling here is that the blog post does not point to Protonmail's own threat model.
https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-threat-model/ https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-threat-model/
Which says don't use it if you are up against state actors and:
"Sensitive business communications – You have sensitive business information that you want to make sure is protected from competitors and other malicious parties. For example, you fear a competitor may want to sue you under false pretenses to get access to sensitive data. In this case, ProtonMail offers a great deal of protection. ProtonMail will not release ANY data unless provided with an enforceable Swiss court order. To get such an order, the case must first work its way through the Swiss courts where stricter privacy laws might result in a different ruling. Even if an adversary went through the expensive and time consuming procedure of obtaining such an order, ProtonMail’s zero access cryptography means we would only be able to release data that is encrypted since we do NOT hold the decryption keys."
Given that they have Javascript to handle the decryption keys, couldn't they demand ProtonMail change the code delivered to your browser session to give up the keys? This would make the only extra security provided by this scheme would be the multiple court jurisdictions and the less tested legality of a court order making their product less secure, ala the FBI and Apple.
- Canada 9y agoThis attack actually happened years ago at a company called Hushmail. Law enforcement had the encrypted email provider serve malicious code to the target which leaked the secret key.
- tvaughan 9y agoThis.
- mzzter 9y agoHushmail operates out of Canada, though. Jurisdiction matters a lot here since Switzerland has a reputation for making it difficult for foreign governments.
- chmars 9y agoThere is no such reputation. Swiss authorities and security services cooperate closely with partners all over the world including the NSA. And there is a longstanding and working network of mutual legal assistance including the Convention on Cybercrime (CCC).
- oldengoldie 9y agoCooperation isn't quite the same as cooperation. There's a world of difference between sharing intelligence on other countries and working together when conducting espionage elsewhere, vs actively attacking domestic targets. Rule of law is taken seriously, and government hacking is a thing - but the scope is very very narrow.
- tonyztan 9y agoI'm not sure there is a legal mechanism to force ProtonMail to add a backdoor... > "Nearly every country in the world has laws governing lawful interception of electronic communications. In Switzerland, these regulations are set out in the Swiss Federal Act on the Surveillance of Postal and Telecommunications Traffic (SPTT) last revised in 2012. In the SPTT, the obligation to provide the technical means for lawful interception is imposed only on Internet access providers, so ProtonMail, as a mere Internet application provider, is completely exempt from the SPTT’s scope of application. This means that under Swiss law, ProtonMail cannot be compelled to backdoor our secure email system." https://protonmail.com/blog/switzerland/ https://protonmail.com/blog/switzerland/
- benwilber0 9y agoIf a government really wanted access to a specific user's ProtonMail account, couldn't they get a court order from a domestic CA, say Verisign, to generate a fake certificate that they can use to MITM a browser session, and deliver key-stealing javascript to the user? I'm not sure what the state of certificate pinning is, but it seems that for the "uber security conscious users" they have instructions to check the SHA-1 fingerprints[0] manually. I feel like there are just an infinite number of technical ways a state actor with unbounded resources and legal access to basically every authority and pipe that operates the internet could MITM a service like this without compelling ProtonMail to do anything. [0]https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/protonmails-ssl-certificate/ https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/protonmails-ss...
- geocar 9y ago> If a government really wanted access to a specific user's ProtonMail account, couldn't they get a court order from a domestic CA Why bother? If they can MITM ProtonMail, they might as well use letsencrypt which just requires you control the domain name (for some definition of control). > I'm not sure what the state of certificate pinning is, Public-Key-Pins-Report-Only: pin-sha256="Jh0ZSUYEc97HRYcwZIOkH2jKOUpmQhLO48MYd1s5pRM="; pin-sha256="2ZnCTNQBrKShr4c1olKfwNG53KiL6qoNcQi65YGRBn8="; pin-sha256="1D76xWwHug9p4iQWVBiDZF+e3UcxtPte/ig5pkYnmRU="; max-age=300; report-uri="https://protonmail.com/pkp-report" Looks like they want to know about violations...