Dark Alliance Reinvents Email Security
New mail protocol will shut out the NSA and prevent snooping on metadata.
Email technology providers Lavabit and Silent Circle have joined forces to launch the Dark Mail Alliance, a project with the goal of building a truly secure and private email communication system that is resistant to spying and government oversight. The two companies have long been leaders in the field of email encryption and employ an impressive team of cryptologists and programmers. (Phil Zimmerman, creator of the popular PGP email encryption tool, is the President and co-founder of Silent Circle.) Both Lavabit and Silent Circle suspended their email services recently in the wake of revelations about NSA spying and orders to allow government access to encryption keys.
Conventional email encryption tools like PGP can encrypt the contents of a message, but not the subject, to and from fields, or other metadata. Also, messages stored on the server can be encyrpted using the key, which governments can obtain from the vendor through a court order. Dark Mail plans to replace the venerable SMTP mail protocol with a more secure alternative and design an infrastructure that will not be susceptible to snooping.
The new protocol will be based on Silent Circle's instant messaging protocol SCIMP. Dark Mail will resemble ordinary email, but behind the scenes, messages will pass through an encrypted peer-to-peer connection. Keys used for the connection will be deleted afterward, which means the email provider would have no knowledge of the keys and could not surrender them even if ordered to do so.
The tools and protocols developed by the Dark Mail alliance will all be open source, and the alliance welcomes scrutiny from cryptologists and security experts. According to the mission statement on the Dark Mail website, "As founding partners of The Dark Mail Alliance, both Silent Circle and Lavabit will work to bring other members into the alliance, assist them in implementing the new protocol, and jointly work to proliferate the worlds first end-to-end encrypted ‘Email 3.0’ throughout the world’s email providers."
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.