Tutonota: An end-to-end encrypted email client and hosted service

https://github.com/tutao/tutanota

by livatlantis • 10 years ago

52 35 10 years ago

github.com

Flimm• 10 years ago

Tutanota is the end-to-end encrypted mail client that enables you to communicate securely with anyone.

Is this promising end-to-end encryption over email even if one of the two parties is not using Tutanota?

x1798DE3• 10 years ago

Looks to me like no: https://tutanota.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/470785

There is some voodoo in there about them storing your unencrypted mail encrypted on their server, but from that diagram it looks like it's only end to end between people registered with Tutanota (it looks like they may also allow federation, since they mention "or another service").

troublord6• 10 years ago

Tutanota never stores unencrypted mails on the server. If you send an encrypted mail to an external recipient, the recipient will receive a link to his end-to-end encrypted mailbox. He can open his encrypted mailbox only with the passphrase that you (the sender) shared with him.

mr_sturd• 10 years ago

If you send an email to someone without Tutanota. They email the recipient with a link to their server. Allowing the recipient to decrypt the email in the browser, using a password agreed on, by the communicating parties.[0]

[0] https://tutanota.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/470795...

skrowl• 10 years ago

If I'm going to go the route of sharing a password, why wouldn't I just put a .txt or .html file with my email body in a password-protected/encrypted .7z or .zip and just send it with plain old gmail? My buddy doesn't have to change his email provider or click on any special links.

In addition to not having forward secrecy (if a 3rd party gets his crypto password, they get ALL of my messages to him), this seems to fail the classic "In order to exchange a secret, first exchange a secret" crypto usability test.

mirimir4• 10 years ago

They nuke accounts created using Tor. That's not very privacy friendly.

troublord6• 10 years ago

That is simply not true. We have a very high degree of Tor users. Unfortunately, some spammers also hide behind Tor. That is why we disable accounts that are used for spamming purposes.

You can always contact our support if you feel that your account has been disabled without reason. We check every case... :)

-- Matthias Founder tutanota.com

mirimir4• 10 years ago

Thanks. That's good to hear :)

But I've had it happen more than once, without warning, and without any mail sent.

Also, contacting support isn't really a viable option, for new personas with no other email address.

Already__Taken• 10 years ago

What extra do the encrypted messaging services offer on top of say, forcing a regular mail server to only user tls1.2. Must we all move onto a single provider?

I'm just curious why that's not good enough where sysadmins collectively pester whoever they require secure communication with to also have a tls1.2 mailserver. Would that not be job done?

dsr_• 10 years ago

That would not be end-to-end. Email is a store-and-forward service, so even if you guarantee that every network hop is protected, the message is in cleartext (and thus inspectable, alterable and censorable) on every server.

stephenr6• 10 years ago

Forcing TLS for the MTA at each end is about network encryption (i.e. akin to HTTPS) this "solution" is about encrypting the contents of the message envelope, i.e. restricting who can read the contents of the message regardless of how its transferred.

As I mentioned elsewhere, it is however yet another non-solution, for the same reason you queried - it's all reliant on a single provider.

Real end-to-end encrypted email is when your mail client uses either S/MIME or PGP/GPG to encrypt your message using the recipient's public key(s). In that situation, it doesn't matter what mail service they use, or what network transport the MTA's use - it's readable only by them (well technically only by anyone with the appropriate private key - I'm going to assume people are protecting their keys).

g4k• 10 years ago

It seems this is browser only. Would be great to have Thunderbird integration.

troublord6• 10 years ago

Please vote for the following feature request: https://tutanota.uservoice.com/forums/237921-general/suggest...

DavideNL• 10 years ago

Beware, does not support local (encrypted) backups.

If their servers disappear for whatever reason (legal issues or hardware problems), you end up with 0 e-mails. Nothing.

stephenr6• 10 years ago

So yet another "end to end encrypted" email "solution", where both ends are controlled by a single vendor.

There are already two, count them, TWO, existing, open, well-understood ways to both sign and encrypt email between two parties: PGP, and S/MIME.

Currently, the UX around setting up and using each of these tools is.. less than stellar.

Now. Just go with me here. What if all the people who keep claiming to have "solved the encryption problem" by locking everyone into their own little silo, instead of doing that, WORKED ON SOLVING THE USABILITY PROBLEMS?

vox_mollis• 10 years ago

PGP is entirely useless if you wish to hide metadata about origin, destination, precise timestamps, etc.

Use cases exist in which you need to communicate securely and authenticated, but can NOT leak the above.

Some combination of Pond( message inboxes, timestamp randomization ) and Ricochet( authentication, origin/destination obfuscation ) is sorely needed.

stephenr6• 10 years ago

if you wish to hide metadata about origin, destination, precise timestamps

Sounds like email in general is not the transmission medium you want then.

paulryanrogers• 10 years ago

There is DarkMail

dang2• 10 years ago

Please don't post snarky 'yet another' dismissals in response to new work. We're trying for more thoughtful discourse than that here. It's fine, of course, to ask what's new or how something differs from another instance in its class.

Also, please don't use all caps for emphasis. That's in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

stephenr6• 10 years ago

Apologies for the caps. I'd edit that part if I could.

The "yet another" is simply because the major points the authors themselves claim, are exactly the same as previous things (also submitted to HN) and with exactly the same fundamental problem, which I specifically described, and even suggested an alternative approach to.

I understand that you want to encourage positive feedback, but I have to ask: are you saying my wording needs improvement (i.e. I should have said "this has the same problem as other similar projects, X, y, z") or are you saying negative feedback in general is discouraged?

steaminghacker• 10 years ago

how does this compare to protonmail ?

stephenr6• 10 years ago

In that it claims to be 'end to end' encryption, but that both 'ends' are from the same vendor, it's exactly the same.

So if you use protonmail and your colleague uses this, and you want to have a secure conversation over email, you're each going to be clicking clicking a fuck load of "view this message on <service you don't use>" links.

mookerific• 10 years ago

At least ProtonMail is working towards full compatibility with the OpenPGP standard, thereby allowing non-Protonmail users to encrypt emails using a standard PGP key - according to their stated roadmap, ProtonMail will eventually allow you to export your keypair and will also allow you to upload keys you've generated outside of their service instead of relying on their service to do the key generation.

Tutanota has implemented their own variation of encryption which is not OpenPGP compliant. Their justification for this deviation rests on their desire to be able to encrypt all aspects of communications (metadata, subject, etc) while PGP doesn't not offer this.

muloka• 10 years ago

Curious why they went with Cordova instead of React Native for their mobile apps.

Are there security considerations between each solution that they took into account when deciding?

Tutonota: An end-to-end encrypted email client and hosted service

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