GnuPG interface security

GnuPG interface security

(These are misellaneous security notes, collected during and around the threat modeling sessions with Eleanor Saitta.)

Composing and replying

When sending mail to a group of recipients, it is important to only assume the lowest common denominator of security and make that clear and visible to the user. We want them to think "why isn't this encrypted?" so they can take steps to fix that (contact the user without a key for example, or trigger key discovery of some sort).

Replying to a message, or forwarding, should maintain security if at all possible. We can't prevent the user from downgrading the security but there should be clear, understandable warnings.

The current lock is good, but it might be good to also have a lock for the header section, and some sort of indication on the send button or elsewhere, telling us how secure the transport is.

For certain workflows, it would be useful to have a "lock security" button, which enforces stronger security for message headers, bodies or transports. In this mode addresses which don't fulfill the security requirements would not be available as recipients and other behaviors which might degrade security would be prevented. This enables the user to think like so: "I am about to say something sensitive, but to avoid accidentaly fat-fingering it and leaking information, I am going to put Mailpile in secure composition mode before I even start writing."

Downloading keys by default?

The main risks to downloading keys, is it exposes to 3rd parties who you are communicating with and provides remote third parties with information about which groups of users are conversing, leaking data about the social graph.

• Should probably be done by default unless a message signals somehow that it is meant to be anonymous.
• If we have a p2p channel, requesting keys over that could make sense for a TOFU model.
• When downloading keys, it would be best to do so via. Tor, and take care to randomize delays between downloads and ask Tor to create a new "identity" for each download.
• It can be very important to download keys to "fill in the blanks", if a group message is sent encrypted to multiple people, and one is missing keys in order to reply - replying unencrypted should probably be prevented (see above), and so obtaining keys is necessary. In this case it is important to download keys by Key ID, checking the encrypted data being replied to, not use the e-mail addresses as they might not match.

Keys and trust

Things to tell the user:

• You have not seen this key before, and have not verified it.
• You have seen this key before, but have not verified it.
• You have seen this key before, and have verified it.
• This key is different from what that person presented last time.
  • Is new key signed by old key? (OK, shutup)
  • The old key was about to expire
  • The old key was revoked
  • This might be weird.

Regarding web of trust

Ella recommends against using it, because the WoT generates a persistent and public social graph that can be mined by adversaries.

And a historic record.

And it does not work.

Key generation

Should be automatic, using best practices, 4K RSA, expiration? 2-3 years?

Questions to a minimum: Do you have a key? Upload to keyserver?

On expiration, Mailpile could automatically generate new keys and sign with old keys and upload. Depending on pres.

Life-stylers vs. normal humans, punt to the command-line for people who do not like the Mailpile GPG model. Or if possible make it a "build your own plugin" problem.