Dropmyemail's security

http://blog.geeksphere.net/2012/09/27/response-to-dropmyemails-response/

by laurenceputra • 14 years ago

8 32 14 years ago

blog.geeksphere.net

notthetup• 14 years ago

Why does this still happen? Aren't security best practices still not wide spread enough to dissuade people form doing this?

phpnode2• 14 years ago

because there's no way their service could ever work without storing passwords, a fact that this article completely ignores.

callmebison5• 14 years ago

Wow, either the author has a serious grudge against them, or isn't willing to at least fact-check their response.

- The app checks your email on your behalf.

- You need the actual password to log into an IMAP server (android also stores your email passwords in clear text if you aren't using gmail http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=10809).

- They clearly state this in their response, which the article completely ignores. They try to use OAuth where possible.

- They store the passwords encrypted via S3. Personally, I'd prefer that to MySQL on a VPS somewhere.

laurenceputra10• 14 years ago

I'm the author.

1) The app downloads your emails into their server.

2) Yes, they store that actual password. Which is ridiculous.

3) Yes, good for them for that, but still there are others where they store passwords. And that is not acceptable.

4) But that also means that they outsource the security part of things. Which doesn't lend faith to the idea that they know about security. And if someone realises how to control their application, all the passwords will be hacked.

5) Pidgin is stored locally. There's a difference. Not that I support it, but it's still better than someone storing my passwords.

thaumaturgy7• 14 years ago

How do you recommend that they regularly backup a user's email messages without storing that user's login credentials for that email service?

callmebison5• 14 years ago

> The app downloads your emails into their server.

They need to do that to back up the emails. The product may not be something you are interested in, but it doesn't mean the execution is flawed.

> Yes, they store that actual password. Which is ridiculous.

They have to in order to retrieve the emails. Blame the standards!

> Yes, good for them for that, but still there are others where they store passwords. And that is not acceptable.

See above

> But that also means that they outsource the security part of things.

> Which doesn't lend faith to the idea that they know about security.

> And if someone realises how to control their application, all the passwords will be hacked.

This isn't something with a black and white answer and I respect your opinion on this. I personally feel that they may know plenty about security and have decided that this is the most secure option. For example, I wouldn't write my own crypto, because I know enough about security to know how hard it is to do right.

laurenceputra10• 14 years ago

in fact, seeing how your account was created to post that comment and seeing how it doesn't make sense, i would suspect that you actually work for them.

thaumaturgy7• 14 years ago

Everything he said makes perfect sense and I agree with it. A brief look at my HN profile should tell you I don't work for them. (Never heard of them before in fact.)

I think that you are practicing cargo cult security -- you're doing a cargo dance here over password storage mechanisms in a case where it doesn't apply.

callmebison5• 14 years ago

I don't post on HN often, and forgot the username I used last time I posted. I don't work for them.

Personally, I don't see a strong use-case for the product and it wouldn't be something I'd be interested in.

If I did work for them, I would happily mention it in a post.

thaumaturgy7• 14 years ago

This article is nonsense. The author isn't saying anything substantive about the "security" of this particular company. It should go without saying that email backup services will currently, in most cases, need to store your email login information in a retrievable way.

A slightly better post might have been,

"Beware unproven email backup services. Don't forget that if they make a mistake, potentially all of your email messages can be exposed to someone else. Since you probably have account credentials for other services stored in your email box, that situation can get ugly really fast."

laurenceputra10• 14 years ago

so you do concede that it can get ugly really fast.

thaumaturgy7• 14 years ago

I "concede" that they are doing nothing wrong and you are way out of your depth here.

I strongly suggest that you drop this before digging yourself an even deeper hole in front of the people following this from Twitter.

callmebison5• 14 years ago

That's a value judgement you have to make, similarly to using any service hosted by someone else.

1) Is the potential loss of privacy worth the advantages of the service?

2) Do you trust the company providing the service?

3) Could you do a more secure job of it than the company?

It's not a service I would personally use, but I have no reason to think the company providing the service doesn't know what they are doing.

nubis4• 14 years ago

I do believe that all this kurfuffle originates from a 'false package deal' composed by: factual data (we store passwords), your assumptions about our incompetence (we're bound to lose them), and your subjective valuation of risk vs. convenience. You should not feel bad about other people breaking down the argument in the different topics. I am a Dropmyemail employee who works hands on with the security of the site, although I'm replying on my personal capacity. We don't practice security through obscurity so we can discuss the technicalities of our security measures here. I would appreciate not being treated as an incompetent goon though, to keep things friendlier. I see on this thread you accuse someone of being sent by the company I work for to discredit you personally: They did not, furthermore, I personally see your article as a valuable service, you will see in our site that we try to be as transparent as possible, and there's nothing that I could want more than for people to actually know and understand what Dropmyemail is about. Thanks for your article.

laurenceputra10• 14 years ago

i'm not assuming you are incompetent. what i'm saying is that no system is fully secure, and by saving the users' passwords, you are risking them.

one of the first rules i learnt in web development is this, you do not store passwords. (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/12/the-dirty-truth-abo...) you never assume that your system will be so secure that no one can hack it.

nubis4• 14 years ago

Indeed, no system is fully secure, and we don't try to hide that fact, that's one of the reasons Dropmyemail exists in the first place. We offer people an off-site backup at the cost of trusting a third party with their password. This is a risk assessment discussion, and I believe although good for raising awareness about what dropmyemail offers, the original articles fails to make a distinction between the objective information it provides and what are your personal valuations on the risk involved (for example, it assumes one of the worst possible scenarios regarding our competence). Things get a bit confusing when non security related topics like storage capacity are mixed in though. I believe you are trying to help people to be safe and choose the better tool to solve their problem, I do think you are underestimating them a bit, but in case I'm wrong I repeat how valuable your article is in raising this issues.

callmebison5• 14 years ago

> you accuse someone of being sent by the company

> I work for to discredit you personally

If this refers to me, I was not attempting to discredit anyone.

I wanted to ensure people didn't think this was another "they store passwords in plain text because they don't know what a hash function is" stories we see every few days.

If you are interested in password security, why not write an article about Tesco?

Dropmyemail's security

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