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.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      5513·
      3 years ago

      Voting is another concept that would become unhackable overnight

      No. Voting on the blockchain is an even worse idea than money on the blockchain.

      In many cases, there are good reasons why these things are done they way they are. I have yet to see a software system that is better at preventing voter fraud than humans looking at your government-issued ID at a poll site and humans overseeing other humans manually counting votes.

      A single actor might be able to commit voter fraud in the order of dozes or hundreds of votes perhaps but with a digital voting system based on blockchain, they could do so on the order of thousands or even millions by compromising end-user devices used for voting or buy enough work/stake/whatever to perform a 51% attack.

      Same goes for money btw. Our current system is by far not a perfect one but removing the ability for governments to i.e. freeze accounts of bad actors is not a boon.

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      3 years ago

      What does Monero do? Why don’t they emulate whatever it is that Monero achieves its reputation and functionality with?

        • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          3 years ago

          How does it address the issues with like money laundering, KYC, etc? Wouldn’t you, in practice, basically need a lawyer to help make sure you “use” it correctly and legally?

          • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            3 years ago

            Wouldn’t you, in practice, basically need a lawyer to help make sure you “use” it correctly and legally?

            Using private cryptocurrency is not illegal, at least in the United States, nor should it be. This is like worrying if it is legal to pay for things with cash.

      • ssokolow@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        Moxie Marlinspike’s My first impressions of web3 is also a very relevant thing to share.

        As a sampler of the points made, web3 is already re-centralizing around gatekeepers because the average person doesn’t want to run their own server (or, in the blockchain case, host their own full copy of the blockchain) and, if the supermajority of users can’t see you because the gatekeepers block you, then it doesn’t really matter that you’re technically still up.

        The takeaway on that particular point is that pushing for more and easier data portability is probably the best route in the face of how real-world users behave. (eg. anything stored in a git repository, including GitHub project wiki contents, is a great example of that. You’ve got your data locally with a simple git clone and you can upload it to a competing service with a simple git push.)

      • andruid@lemmy.ml
        11·
        3 years ago

        I like Dan Olson’s video but I don’t think it’s truly unassailable. There is some real use cases for block chains in low trust networks. One of those being global monetary policy. Another critic is that web3 applications (like Mastadon and Lemmy …) I think is moving forward even more so as the age of easy money comes to a full close.

          • andruid@lemmy.ml
            1·
            3 years ago

            It’s the coordinated decentralization that really defines web from web2 and 1. Cooperative vs competitive coordination is just a sub strategy within that, but I don’t think either strategy is always best for all problems.

    • koper@feddit.nl
      242·
      3 years ago

      Key servers can be dishonest, so you need to have another way of verifying that the key you receive is correct.

    • Catsrules@lemmy.ml
      121·
      3 years ago

      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.

      • Pipoca@lemmy.world
        8·
        3 years ago

        How do you ensure the accuracy of the data going into the block chain in the first place?

        • Catsrules@lemmy.ml
          3·
          3 years ago

          That I don’t know the answer too. And i would like more information about how it works. I am mostly familiar with Crypto in block chains work and I still wouldn’t say i fully understand that either.

          I am also a little confused when they say unchanging. Sure block chain are unchanging but I am assuming you can add new data that would take priority of old data. I don’t think you would want a system that you could never change your key once you add it. Because that is stupid keys can and will get compromised eventually.

  • 0x0F@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    265·
    3 years ago

    It sounds overcomplicated, is there really a need for the blockchain aspect? Could the same security be provided by a simpler method (like how keybase has their identity proofs?) but better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it ig

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        14·
        3 years ago

        How many people have verified how many people’s identity with PGP signatures? Also I’m willing to bet a horribly shocking amount of people would just accept a new key from someone (not necessarily sign it) and trust them regardless.

    • Nougat@kbin.social
      166·
      3 years ago

      Right here:

      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.

      The benefit of doing this with a blockchain instead of a privately held and maintained database is that the latter can be compromised, and you just have to trust “whoever” is maintaining that private database. Blockchain means that the ledger is distributed to many nodes, and any post-entry modification to that chain would be instantly recognized, and marked invalid by the other nodes operating the chain. Besides that, when you’re looking up a public key for a recipient on such a blockchain, you would be looking it up at a number of nodes large enough that in order for a malicious entry to come through, they would all have to be modified in the same way, at the same time, and you would have to be asking before the change got flagged. Poisoning blockchain data like this is simply not possible; that’s what makes this an especially secure option.

      • thesmokingman@programming.dev
        8·
        3 years ago

        But it’s not public. It’s a private blockchain. The immutable ledger aspect only matters if everyone can see the ledger. Otherwise we take at face value all of the things you said. Assume they run one node and that one node is compromised by a malicious actor. The system fails. Extend it to a limited number of nodes all controlled by SREs and assume an SRE is compromised (this kind of spearphishing is very common). The system fails again.

        Sure, you can creatively figure out a way to manage the risks I’ve mentioned and others I haven’t thought of. The core issue, that it’s not public, still remains. If I’m supposed to trust Proton telling me the person I’m emailing is not the NSA pretending to be that person (as the Proton CEO suggested), I need to trust their verification system.

        • Nougat@kbin.social
          55·
          3 years ago

          It’s. In. Beta. Of course it’s not being offered to the general public yet. It’s likely that there are very many beta nodes, in order to test scalability. When it’s out of beta, you drop the beta chain and start a new one.

          • thesmokingman@programming.dev
            73·
            3 years ago

            Did we read the same article? Emphasis mine.

            Yen said Proton might move the feature to a public blockchain

            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.”

            • Nougat@kbin.social
              93·
              3 years ago

              Context matters:

              Proton rolled out the beta version of Key Transparency on their own private blockchain, meaning it’s not run by a decentralized series of validators, as with Bitcoin or Ethereum. Yen said Proton might move the feature to a public blockchain after the current version serves as a proof of concept.

              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.

              • thesmokingman@programming.dev
                53·
                3 years ago

                … 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.

                • Nougat@kbin.social
                  92·
                  3 years ago

                  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.

              • thesmokingman@programming.dev
                1·
                3 years ago

                Untestable security claims for sensitive information are useless. I’m a huge fan of Proton and I’m excited to test this but only once the blockchain is public. Until then there is no way to verify the trust so there is no trust.

                If you disagree, I might have something for you. I’ve got the strongest financial encryption known to man on top of the best transit system ever that makes it super easy to do stuff. It’s all based on blockchain, of course. Just give me your credit card info and bank details. It’s in beta so I won’t let you audit it, but unless you’re shilling you don’t have a problem with that.

        • Nougat@kbin.social
          133·
          3 years ago

          As long as there is an appropriate method for adding a legitimate entry to the chain, incorrectly entered data can be handled by appending corrected data on to the chain, and marking the error as such. Sensitive data, in this case, would be along the lines of “I accidentally added my private key instead of my public key.” The action necessary here is the same as if I published my private key anywhere: stop using that key pair and generate a new one.

  • herr@lemmy.world
    181·
    3 years ago

    I would strongly assume Protonmail will be doing this automatically soon, there’s no manual day-to-day verification necessary.

    Writing to the Blockchain is difficult and takes processing power, reading from it is absolutely trivial though.

  • RecallMadness@lemmy.nz
    141·
    3 years ago

    I’ll use it once they’ve sorted out CalDAV and CardDAV… it’s only been an open issue for eight fucking years.

      • RecallMadness@lemmy.nz
        5·
        3 years ago

        There’s no way to sync contacts and calendars between an iPhone (and other mail clients) and protonmail. The app does one way sync from the phone to protonmail, but not the other way round.

        8 years ago a feature request was made to add support for CardDAV and CalDAV, but even with the release of bridge it’s not there.

        So iOS users have to resort to using other calendar services, or 3rd party bridges to enable it.

    • wahming@monyet.cc
      English
      10·
      3 years ago

      It’s not like we’re controlling spam today by keeping email addresses hidden.

    • OmanMkII@aussie.zone
      8·
      3 years ago

      The public part of it would be the RSA pubkey, likely linked with an identifier such as the SHA-256 hash of the email. You could quite easily have that ledger public and it would take millennia to crack any of the emails, much easier to use fuzzing with common words and names than trying wasting computing power for a single email. The whole point of blockchain is that it’s an immutable public ledger which would actually suit this idea quite well.

        • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          English
          2·
          3 years ago

          This is solving a problem we DO have, albeit in a different way. Email is ancient, the protocol allows you to self identify as whoever you want. Let’s say I send an email from the underworld (server ip address) claiming I’m Napoleon@france (user@domain), the only reason my email is rejected is because the recipient knows Napoleon resides on the server France, not underworld. This validation is mostly done via tricky DNS hacks and a huge part of it is built on top of Google’s infrastructure. If for some reason Google decides I’m not trustworthy, then it doesn’t matter if I’m actually sending Napoleon’s mail from France, it’s gonna be recognized as spam on most servers regardless.

          A decentralized chain of trust could potentially replace Google + all these DNS hacks we have in place. No central authority gets to control who is legitimate or not. Of all the bs use cases of block chain I think this one doesn’t seem that bad. It’s building a decentralized chain of trust for an existing decentralized system (email), which is exactly what “block chain” was originally designed for.

        • h6a@beehaw.org
          1·
          3 years ago

          I think the main pro of this system would be that it requires no trust. The immutability would be actually a con for privacy: if you’re burned or doxxed later, there would be hard evidence of your identity in the blockchain.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          3 years ago

          What do you think the problem even is? It sounds like you just don’t understand why someone would want to use public key cryptography to begin with.

            • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              1·
              3 years ago

              I understand why you’d want one

              It’s an email that’s unrecoverable so not usable in many companies.

              It doesn’t sound like you understand why someone would want to do email with public key cryptography, it sounds like rather you do not like the idea of doing email with public key cryptography. Being unrecoverable is just the tradeoff there. Again, what do you think the problem described even is? For reference,

              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.

              I think if you actually acknowledge the problem of trust for propagating public keys as a real one that is worth being solved, it would be hard to argue that blockchain is a bad fit for that problem, because it is not. Trustless, verifiable propagation of data is one of the things it actually offers unique benefits for.

              I’m sure there are other reasons to not like the idea, but that’s what I can think off the top of my head.

              It might be useful to start by considering the idea itself and what it is saying, instead of looking for arguments to make against it.

                • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  1·
                  3 years ago

                  What are the tradeoffs, assuming an email encryption scheme based on self custodied private keys and publicly published public keys? I don’t see any major disadvantages to using blockchain for this, and significant advantages. It’s a big deal if no one can selectively remove/conceal previously published info. If associating a key with an email, and someone is trying to impersonate you, you’ll know it, it’s not going to be hidden from you and specifically shown to someone else. It just makes sense to do it that way. Yes, you have to trust something at some point, but this is a way to minimize how much trust you have to give.

    • hersh@literature.cafe
      184·
      3 years ago

      Key verification has been a real problem for decades, and AFAIK nobody’s made a solution that is simple and effective.

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
        42·
        3 years ago

        nobody’s made a solution that is simple and effective

        This one isn’t that either by the looks of it but it’s certainly a problem where something like blockchain could provide a solution.

  • Elias Griffin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    3 years ago

    So, every identity verification of your email address will be forever in the public domain? That’s counter to privacy. Your email address will be married to a block and chain? There is no thorny issue. That’s a solution to a problem that hardly anyone has. Ridiculous nonsense.

    If you are one of those people that thought CERN was looking out for your privacy, here is the rude awakening.

  • Atemu@lemmy.ml
    43·
    3 years ago

    So PM claims it has on the order of 10^8 users. Let’s assume each user has one email address with one public ed25519 key, both of which are likely false.

    Each key is 32Byte; 32B * 10^8 = 3.2GB.

    Could someone do the math how much fiat it’d take to store such an enormous amount of data on the Ethereum or monero blockchains?

    • toomanyjoints69@lemmygrad.mlBanned
      21·
      3 years ago

      We now have an unalterable record of exactly who you are for your anonymous email address. For your privacy.

    • quaver@lemmy.ml
      31·
      3 years ago

      This announcement doesn’t have anything to do with cryptocurrencies or nfts. I’m not sure if I like the idea yet either, but please don’t conflate it with all that other scammy nonsense.

    • andruid@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 years ago

      While it is funny (honestly replacing any tech term with circlejerk in a tech article makes it sound so funny to me, I have the mind of a child), it’s not very relevent here.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    612·
    3 years ago

    Don’t use proton…

    You can’t just give all of your data to one company and expect it to be private

    • volleyballcrocodile@lemmy.world
      16·
      3 years ago

      Is your suggestion to self host your email or not use email? I’m not sure why you couldn’t find a company that you do trust, and proton seems to be one of the most likely candidates.