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On 2020-08-28 17:12, Grant Taylor wrote: |
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> On 8/28/20 1:54 PM, Poison BL. wrote: |
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>> I'm rather late to the game with this, but at the end of the day, |
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>> mail coming *into* a mail server isn't typically encrypted (and even |
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>> that is only the body, the headers can still reveal a great deal, |
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>> and are necessary for the server to work with it). |
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> |
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> You seem to be referring to S/MIME and / or PGP encryption. You are |
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> correct that S/MIME and PGP don't offer protection for headers. |
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> |
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> However, STARTTLS provides an encrypted channel to protect all of the |
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> SMTP traffic. Thus, even the headers of email are encrypted while in |
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> flight between servers. |
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> |
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>> A packet dump at the switch will turn over every piece of mail you |
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>> receive along the way. |
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> |
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> When STARTTLS is in use, the only thing that you will see is the initial |
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> EHLO and STARTTLS commands. Everything after that will be encrypted |
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> traffic. |
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> |
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TLS only secures the channel; what comes out at the end is a plain-text |
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message that can be read with minimal effort by the VPS provider, no |
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skullduggery needed. (And the private key for each TLS session is |
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generated on-the-fly by the VPS anyway, so they could snoop on the |
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channel too if they wanted to.) |
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|
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Unless the sender and recipient have some pre-shared secret (like GPG |
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assumes), you're going to fall into the same trap that DRM falls into. |
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The technology provides a way for Alice and Bob to communicate securely |
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in the presence of Eve, but only when Alice, Bob, and Eve are three |
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distinct people. If the VPS is playing the part of both Bob and Eve, an |
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off-the-shelf encryption model isn't going to work. |
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