On 04/20/2017 11:35 AM, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 07:01:05PM +0200, Jon wrote:This is why I think smtp should be extended. All your mail agents support (E)SMTP and presumably they would all support an extension to smtp. The private keys will need to be stored some how to allow for multiple clients, but a key generated from user input could be used to decrypt a stored copy of the private key.A major problems with all E2E email encryption proposals is unrelated to key distribution, none of the extant MUAs provide an adequate interface for E2E encrypted email. + Encrypted email is not searchable.
Sure it is, by the recipient MUA, else the user could not read their email. It would not be searchable by a 3rd party - which is the point of encryption.
+ Encrypted email is difficult to scan for spam and malware
The scan would have to take place in the MUA. Firewall scanners would fail, as they do now with S/MIME or encrypted PGP.
+ Changing the private key can mean loss of access to email
encrypted under the old key.
Only if you throw away old keys. Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this. - So Do not do that :-)
+ Signatures stop verifying when the signature key expires,
even though they were valid at the the email was received.
Again, do not throw away the old keys. An MUA should not allow a user to throw away any key needed for any message still in the store. Yep - complex.
....
-- Doug Royer - (http://DougRoyer.US http://goo.gl/yrxJTu ) DouglasRoyer@xxxxxxxxx 714-989-6135
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