Proton Mail, the leading privacy-focused email service, is making its first foray into blockchain technology with Key Transparency, which will allow users to verify email addresses. From a report: In an interview with Fortune, CEO and founder Andy Yen made clear that although the new feature uses blockchain, the key technology behind crypto, Key Transparency isn’t “some sketchy cryptocurrency” linked to an “exit scam.” A student of cryptography, Yen added that the new feature is “blockchain in a very pure form,” and it allows the platform to solve the thorny issue of ensuring that every email address actually belongs to the person who’s claiming it.
Proton Mail uses end-to-end encryption, a secure form of communication that ensures only the intended recipient can read the information. Senders encrypt an email using their intended recipient’s public key – a long string of letters and numbers – which the recipient can then decrypt with their own private key. The issue, Yen said, is ensuring that the public key actually belongs to the intended recipient. “Maybe it’s the NSA that has created a fake public key linked to you, and I’m somehow tricked into encrypting data with that public key,” he told Fortune. In the security space, the tactic is known as a “man-in-the-middle attack,” like a postal worker opening your bank statement to get your social security number and then resealing the envelope.
Blockchains are an immutable ledger, meaning any data initially entered onto them can’t be altered. Yen realized that putting users’ public keys on a blockchain would create a record ensuring those keys actually belonged to them – and would be cross-referenced whenever other users send emails. “In order for the verification to be trusted, it needs to be public, and it needs to be unchanging,” Yen said.
Curious if anyone here would use a feature like this? It sounds neat but I don’t think I’m going to be needing a feature like this on a day-to-day basis, though I could see use cases for folks handling sensitive information.
Did we read the same article? Emphasis mine.
I’m not interested until it’s public. Additionally, building out the chain then dropping it to rebuild a new public one is rewriting history, which violates the whole “immutable” part of “immutable ledger.”
Context matters:
It’s not rewriting history. We’re talking about validation of public keys. The exact same information can be added to a public non-beta chain, to satisfy the concerns about security that would come from maintaining a previously private beta chain into production.
… which gives a timing attack and the ability for bad actors to impersonate someone. I agree with you that, once public, this is a good idea. You cannot convince me that this is a good idea if done privately because there is no way to trust but verify, especially in the highly sensitive contexts they want trust in.
If it’s not public, I won’t trust it. You trust it blindly because it’s in beta. We’re not going to come to an agreement over these mutually exclusive positions.
I don’t “trust it blindly” because it’s in beta - I understand that it’s a work in progress because it’s in beta. Jesus christ you people and your fucking tinfoil hats.
Your only response to valid criticism about the lack of verification is pointing to the state of development as if that magically washes away all of the criticism. It doesn’t.
While I do have many tinfoil hats, basic fucking trust measures do not require me to pull them out. This is cryptography 101 shit not anything complicated.
“Hey, I’m making a cake, I think you’ll like to have a piece when it’s done!”
NO WAY AM I EATING THAT RAW BATTER WITH UNCOOKED EGGS IN IT YOU’RE EVIL
This is why you’re not one of the beta testers.
You don’t understand basic trust relationships. I don’t really care about your opinion. I already called out that your blind trust in beta software conflicts with my security fundamentals so we’re at an impasse. Once you understand why validation is important or can show why a critical component of trust architecture is somehow not necessary, I’d be happy to be happy to reconsider your opinion.
Keep living in your weird fantasy world where applications and solutions should pop into existence fully formed, feature-rich, and bug-free, with no development or testing whatsoever.
Hey I’ve got a new scheme to validate the identity of someone for a very sensitive conversation. You wanna use it? Trust me, it’s secure.
I feel like you don’t understand the difference between a product roadmap and security fundamentals.