On 02/01/2011 12:36 PM, Manuel Faux wrote:
>> "was never intended to" depends on how you look at it :). From my
>> point of view it was intended that way because I implemented it that way.
>> Djigzo is an email encryption gateway that encrypts and decrypts email
>> at the gateway level. If you don't want email to be decrypted at the
>> gateway level than don't put the private key on the gateway. If the
>> private key is not available, the message cannot be decrypted.
> What do you think is the benefit of this feature? Is there any "normal"
> situation you forward an encrypted email without reencrypting it?
My mail server is configured to process mail for about ten different 
domains. In all domains, there's mail that is forwarded to one of my 
personal email addresses. I read that mail on one of three different 
computers and a smartphone. If encrypted email is not decrypted and 
re-encrypted on my djigzo server, I'd have to have private keys of all 
email adresses that I receive mail for, on each of those computers. 
Because Djigzo neatly reencrypts the mail, I only need one private key 
for all mail. The fact that the mail is re-encrypted doesn't bother me, 
because I trust my server.
As Martijn said, if some messages are too private and/or secret to be 
decrypted on the server, just don't put the private key for that 
particular email address on the server. Like, in a company you could 
have board members decrypt their email on their laptop. The Djigzo 
gateway will simply keep the mail encrypted because it can't encrypt it. 
You could even supply two different certificates to board members, one 
of wich the private key sits on the Djigzo gateway, the others private 
key only sits on the persons laptop.

I do agree with you that there's a potential security hole. The fact 
that you can intercept an encrypted email and redirect it to someone 
else who can read it unencrypted requires an accomplice inside the 
organization. If you have "the bad guys" inside your organization, then 
your problems are not limited to email security. But suppose a very 
confidential message to the board gets redirected to "[email protected]". 
Then everybody in the company gets the confidential email, unencrypted. 
But then, sending email that should be confidential for most of your 
staff, I don't think it's a good idea to encrypt that with a key that 
sits on the gateway anyway.

Martijn, I do second the wish to have a "paranoid" feature on the 
gateway. Setting that to "on" for me would mean that I have to keep more 
private keys on more computers and phones, so I wouldn't use it.

dagdag
Christine

-- 
The total amount of clue on the Internet is a fixed constant (Bill
Cheswick, ca. 1994).
The Internet has grown a lot since then (Wietse Venema, 2011).

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