hushmail sec foo

ok, so i'm not a hushmail user, but i've been generally aware of them since back in the day...

anyway, this article about them assisting law enforcement by turning over unencrypted copies of emails is kinda interesting. at first glance one might be tempted to see this as a violation of their basic principles, but it doesn't seem like that's the issue...

the premise of HM is that they are just a medium for email crypted in public strong algorithms, and they never control keys, so they can't read the mails even if they want to.

this is yet another story of strong security measures being compromised by usage and design choices because the strong security was inconvenient and/or unwieldy... the workaround they created to become more user-friendly introduced (known) risk into the equation. in the newer easier to use system, they set up the crypo, and so briefly have the keys.

in this case, people using the new methodology were pwnt by law enforcement using legal channels to ask HM to store and use those keys to decrypt the mails. btw, the HM ToS does not protect illegal activity...

the article notes a fairly obvious potential flaw in the high security model as well. in the high sec method, you have to install and exec a java applet (which you get from HM) which does all of the crypto on your box instead of the server. well, if there is malicious code introduced into the applet, HM can gank your keys.

despite this, i think good and intuitive software design can mitigate the risk as well as the inconvenience... if i ever did anything beyond scripting in my basement nowadays (and play CoD4 w000000t!!!!), i'd consider writing a firefox plugin which did the heavy lifting on running the java applet, and also did checksums on the applet to make sure HM doesn't try to send you a modified copy later. functional reverse engineering and/or blackboxing the applet (if it isn't already oss?) would strengthen the whole thing too... poof, risk window of crypto compromise reduced...

geeze, and this isn't even the post i intended to write when i logged in... stay tuned... ;)