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Show HN: Easily send encrypted email from your existing email

virtru.com

22 pointsconorgil14526 comments

So, can I keep the keys myself instead of storing them in the cloud? Or do I have to trust Virtru instead of google or some other company that they don't buckle when someone comes knocking for the keys?

Based on the feature list, I can't have the keyserver on my own server. I have to trust Virtru. This is no different than sending the text in plain IMO.

The website does actually say advanced users can run their own keystore, but this does seem like the weak point in the service in general.

Nope.

> However, you’re entrusting us to help you maintain your privacy; you should know how we will respond if the government asks us for access to your encryption keys. The government would need those keys if it wanted to read any encrypted files it does obtain. Without them, the files are useless.

> We won’t provide your keys to anyone without your consent — unless we are ordered to divulge them by a judge with jurisdiction over us. If we are ordered to divulge them, we will fight for you to have notice and an opportunity to object.

So I guess I'll keep waiting for a DarkMail client.

so from a security standpoint, this is equivalent to the status quo, except transferring responsibility from Google to a small startup for maintaining keys? I'd be shocked if google doesn't encrypt emails at rest. Is there still plenty of inflight unencrypted SMTP traffic to worry about that this could address? I guess you have to worry about the recipient if you are sending email to a non gmail/hotmail/ymail address?

>> I'd be shocked if google doesn't encrypt emails at rest

Virtru encrypts email content on the client side, so your email is protected before it ever leaves your computer. That gives you protection in transit and at rest

>> I guess you have to worry about the recipient if you are sending email to a non gmail/hotmail/ymail address?

Virtru allows you to send securely to any recipient, regardless of the email provider they use. The easiest way to read the secure message is to use the Virtru software to integrate with your existing email client.

Our iPhone client uses IMAP, so it works with any email provider that supports IMAP.

Our browser extension currently integrates with Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com. If the Virtru browser extension does not integrate with your email provider, then we provide a mechanism to read the secure email in your browser without installing anything. However, you cannot reply securely without the Virtru software.

One of our core goals is to bring privacy to the masses without poeple needing to completely ditch their current accounts and infrastructure. We want to seamlessly integrate with the apps people already use so that even non-technical people can use it.

DarkMail would require people to completely ditch everything and jump to a new system.

But for the super-security minded folks we're researching ways we can seamlessly integrate PGP like capabilities into the product so that Virtru would never even be in a position to see the keys at all.

So as of this moment, you can't keep the keys yourself. Our technology absolutely allows for self-hosted keys. We do have private key managers being developed, which we intend to open source, and be for private use. It will be an option for the those that want the responsibility of keeping the keys safe, and also address your concern.

great. Thanks. Will signup when it becomes available :)

Out of curiosity, on which platform would you want to run the self-hosted server?

Also, our privacy policy contains details on how we handle user data: https://www.virtru.com/privacy-policy

And we have a blog post discussing some frequently asked questions on government surveillance: https://blog.virtru.com/faq-on-government-surveillance/

about blog: yeah, I agree you need to obey the laws and everything, but does the law state that you need to store the keys?

Until the law does, keeping all the keys in one place is an invitation for the bear to get the honey. If all the honey was in separate honeycombs, the bear might still get them all, but would probably have a tad bit more work to do.

Atleast hypothetically :).

That is one reason why the underlying tech we're using, particularly the TDF, is designed to allow you to use any key server you want. Our hope is that we're the first of many TDF key servers out there, and are working to open source a key server under Apache license so anyone can use and contribute. If you're interested in helping make that possible or know people who might be, let us know.

Virtru dev here!

Virtru allows users to easily send encrypted email from their existing email address. It is super easy to use and currently works in your browser and on your phone.

We are launching our public beta program today and would love feedback from the community. Several of the Virtru team members will be monitoring this thread to respond to feedback and questions.

EDIT: Virtru team members: DHowitzer (CTO), ravenac95, znelson, jgilpin

Open Source Key Server - For those of you interested in hosting your own key server (ACM) or helping to make a free and open source key server a reality, we're looking for people to help us. Contact me if you're interested.

How can Virtru help email users who are concerned with government surveillance activities that have been revealed in the last year?

Encryption has been used in the past to keep emails secure from surveillance(PGP), but it has always been cumbersome to setup and use on both ends. Virtru's focus has been to make powerful encryption available to everyone by making it easy to use and with the services you and those you communicated with already use. Right now we have Chrome/Firefox support as well as an iPhone app...but many other clients soon.

PGP - one can store the keys on one's own server. In Virturo, it appears it has to be on Virutro servers. So hypothetically, we could have a Lavabit moment.

See my other comment about Virtru and allowing for self-hosted keys. We also don't host the content, so different laws apply..I think znelson commented on that somewhere in the thread already.

I think it's been iterated before, but in the future we intend to open source our key serving software. There's still much work to be done on that front. We love PGP's crypto, but we found a few problems with it in general:

1) It's hard for the normal person. (The user experience for PGP is just horrendous)

2) Before you send an email to someone you have to know their public key.

With that said, we have done some research on integrating PGP like public key encryption along with our current key serving mechanism. With public key, using Virtru will be essentially equivalent to holding the keys yourself. Look for more of this in the future :-)

Hey, that's a great question. We've put a lot of time and effort into thinking about this and have been working with some key people in the industry who have a lot of experience in this area.

We've comprehensively addressed this issue on our blog. Here's the direct link: https://blog.virtru.com/faq-on-government-surveillance/

Let us know what you think.

     > Q. What would Virtru do if it received a request 
     >    from the United States government for encryption keys?

     > A. We will require the government to go to court, 
     >    and if we can, we will notify you.

To me that seems naive. You won't be able to notify anyone if you get a National Security Letter (NSL). Lavabit had turned over encryption keys for individual users, because they had to [1]. They only shut down when the government wanted their SSL key, to give access to everyone.

How are you any different?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit

Unlike lavabit we're not a content provider and therefore not bound by the same laws. We're just a third-party provider that holds the keys. #7 on the blog post here goes into more details: https://blog.virtru.com/faq-on-government-surveillance/

Hi, it's Will Ackerly here. We've thought a lot about the National Security Letter scenario, and so, we're going to be pushing to our website a Canary (in the coal mine) icon, linking to a statement declaring that we have never received an NSL. Our special counsel on privacy (Tim Edgar, who used to work at ACLU) came up with the idea for us, which I believe Apple is using through regular reports (not a literal canary icon on their website).

Rsync.net uses a warrant canary as well:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

I've actually found it kind of surprising that they haven't had any warrants yet.

But you're going to be served with an NSL if you get big enough to be interesting. It seems to happen to everyone. An then you won't be able to update the canary any more. That's a good idea, but I don't think it is enough.

I don't mean to be negative, I just guess I don't see why you'll succeed against the government when the others have not.

Great points, definitely not negative, just realistic.

There may be no single silver bullet here. In addition to pursuing open source key servers, we're also working on UI/UX for easy addition of public key wrapping using the same crypto as PGP. Our hope is that we can deploy public key in a way that most people start using it to minimize the proportion of unwrapped keys on Virtru's server.

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