Google adds stronger encryption for some Gmail users, in beta

Google has added client-side encryption for some email customers, allowing enterprise and education Gmail users to send and receive encrypted messages. The service encrypts email messages in the client's browser before they are transmitted or stored in Google Cloud. It allows Gmail customers — not the cloud provider — to …

[Anonymous Coward]

National Security Letters

Google has to be able to comply with National Security Letters (NSL). So no true encryption for you!

When all those University's & Schools turned their email over to Google, they made it so they don't know when their students or faculty are subject to a NSL. Had they kept running their own email servers, they would.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rear Entry

Google's Backdoor is [statute-]bound to be very accommodating.

[sreynolds]

Re: National Security Letters

Beggars belief that people ceded control of their email and voice to third parties many of which are their competitors.

Anyhow, lets see the gmail is a browser app. The keys are most prob stored in some password based key storage file. Big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Minor nit: CSE vs E2EE is not an either or. All forms of end-to-end encryption require client-side encryption, not all client-side encryption schemes are fully end-to-end protected. The degradation in protection here is deliberate, as having employees send encrypted messages that can't be read by the employer would be a substantial breach of compliance regulations in many industries, and probably a bad idea in all the ones not explicitly so regulated.

[sreynolds]

Exactly. The whole exercise is pointless and is treating email like something that a cloud operator controls.

Why is it so hard to change the SMTP standard to allow per domain keys, perhaps like SNIs for TLS is hard to understand. I mean the EHLO domain or OHLE domanname before the session is trivial and would work for most standard configs.

This is what we get for selling out for free services

[Gene Cash]

This is what we get for selling out for free services

And why I stopped using gmail and started paying for an account. It was this very forum that finally got me off my butt to do that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

Quote #1: "... customers — not the cloud provider — to retain control over encryption keys..."

Quote #2: "...clients use encryption keys that are generated and stored in a cloud-based key management service..."

More window dressing.....because:

(1) There are persistent keys stored somewhere

(2) Participants (sender and receiver) need to share information about the stored keys

...so....just how much security or privacy does this window dressing provide. Not much!!

But there is another peer-to-peer option for users:

(3) Use a Diffie/Hellman scheme and do the heavy lifting of encryption/decryption ONLY on the peer devices

(4) Do the encryption BEFORE the encrypted message enters any public channel

(5) The peers exchange D/H tokens (not keys) and these tokens tell snoops nothing about either the key or the encryption method

(6) A different randomly generated key for every message

(7) No persistent keys....the key for a message is calculated when needed by each peer....then thrown away

Summary:

(8) The heavy lifting is done only in a peer application

(9) The peer application is free to use prime numbers much bigger than 8192 bits!

(10) Randomly generated keys for every message

(11) No persistent keys

(12) Roll your own code....3000 lines of C will get it done!

(13) Health warning: Read Reference No. 2

Ref Number 1: Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schneier, Section 22.1

Ref Number 2: Cryptography Engineering, Ferguson/Schneier/Kohno, Chapter 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

Dear AC: You forgot to mention that the D/H encryption/decryption should also be a multi-pass scheme, say triple encrypted. That way, even if the spooks break the third encryption pass.....they still have two more to break. I'm sure Google won't be implementing this feature any time soon!!

[Belperite]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

Multipass!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

@AC

Ah......C is really hard work.......maybe you should look at using Python3 and the gmpy library.....fast and MUCH less code!!!!

[IGotOut]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

Now AC, manage that for 500,000 messages a day, for several thousand users, many of whom can't remember their logon password if they go home for more than a few days, all whilst being able to retrieve and store messages sent and received for several years.

Sorry, I went off into the real world for a while there, my mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

@IGotOut

Who mentioned 500,000 messages a day? AC certainly did not!

......AC was saying that citizens -- groups of citizens -- might arrange for some privacy for the group. Surely a reasonable demand when otherwise folk in Cheltenham or Fort Meade are snooping on everything?

What point are YOU trying to make?

[Orv]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

I sort of figure that thinking I, as a private citizen, can manage to come up with encryption that will defeat a three-letter government agency is the height of hubris. (And if I did they could just rubber-hose me for the key, right?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

@Orv

Quote: "...rubber-hose me for the key..."

Try again! In a D/H scheme there IS NO PERSISTENT KEY! Just a random, transient key for each message. In a D/H peer-to-peer application, the users never create a key, never see a key, never select a key...they just create or read a plain text message. Isn't mathematics wonderful!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

Of course, El Reg commentards will want to see an ACTUAL Diffie/Hellman message. This one uses a 60.000 bit prime number, so the token is a lot longer than the message. Howard Beale to Thomas Beale!! Enjoy!! Decrypt!!

====

<MESSAGE>

<SENDER_REF>HBEALE</SENDER_REF>

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9</SENDER_TOKEN>

<RECIPIENT_REF>TBEALE</RECIPIENT_REF>

<TEXT>VxQCG4lj8+LxJV0wuLCnKgziIkOLutwamfdkg6xlKQa3cQ7yX8eTJFTWnh7g67un57P297n7PsG4

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</TEXT>

</MESSAGE>

====

[druck]

Re: Window Dressing -- Is it paid for out of the Fort Meade budget?

I think its time for a ban for anyone posting large amounts of supposed cypher text in response to any article mentioning encryption - a double ban for anyone not even using HTML tags to stop it coming out double spaced.

[PapaPepe]

OpenPGP

As far as I was able to find out, Proton is the only web-mail service that is fully interoperable with OpenPGP {https://www.openpgp.org/). (It does not implement W-O-T, but so does not - for instance - Thunderbird native OpenPGP).

Can somebody please correct me if I failed to identify another service?

Implementing "E2E mail encryption" only for the traffic between users of the same web-mail service vendor is pointless, even if done "lege artis" - which this is far from.

[Mike 16]

End to End

Nice thought, but pretty much every communications device available to "common folk" is not all that trustworthy.

If the "client" lives in a smartphone, the already built-in capability to snoop the keyboard and display mean the "ends" are basically "Somebody Else's Computer"

True end to end would be my fingers to your eyes or my mouth to your ears (or vice versa) Not between two bits of software controlled by the developer, manufacturer, network provider, various government agencies, random criminals with "friends" in any of the above, etc. etc.

Of course, very few are likely to be willing to procure and manage a device less likely to be suborned. Available bandwidth for streaming is _far_ more important than staying solvent and out of the Gulag. :-)

Good chance that being found in possession of such a device is a quick ticket to that gulag.