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petar · 6 Jan 2017, 07:59 AM

I just want to contribute a little bit with an article on browser based cryptography - https://tonyarcieri.com/whats-wrong-with-webcrypto. The point is that you can not trust the browser to isolate you from the server, mostly because you dynamically load unsupervised code for execution (from the server) - but not only. This means that services like ProtonMail and Tutanota are not as secure as advertised, at least in principle (and we have witnessed that principle manifest, sooner or later).
I myself am paid user of Tutanota, although I do not actually use it and consider this a donation for the development of the field, so this is not bashing. To have really secure client side encryption, you need a client, where code is not loaded dynamically, that is - not a browser. And this is just for the storage of messages - incoming and outgoing messages are still subject to interception. For real end to end encryption, the base mail system would have to be extended, which means that it will be generally incompatible with most of the world.

6 Jan 2017, 07:59 AM	#22
petar Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2017 Posts: 4	I just want to contribute a little bit with an article on browser based cryptography - https://tonyarcieri.com/whats-wrong-with-webcrypto. The point is that you can not trust the browser to isolate you from the server, mostly because you dynamically load unsupervised code for execution (from the server) - but not only. This means that services like ProtonMail and Tutanota are not as secure as advertised, at least in principle (and we have witnessed that principle manifest, sooner or later). I myself am paid user of Tutanota, although I do not actually use it and consider this a donation for the development of the field, so this is not bashing. To have really secure client side encryption, you need a client, where code is not loaded dynamically, that is - not a browser. And this is just for the storage of messages - incoming and outgoing messages are still subject to interception. For real end to end encryption, the base mail system would have to be extended, which means that it will be generally incompatible with most of the world.