Matthew Cosman wrote:

There is no such thing as secure e-mail in conventional MTA'S ["mail transport
agents"; almost always sendmail --RAK].  Most people don't realize that when you
send e-mail it quite possibly gets passed through 100 different computers before
it gets delivered.

Russell Kent wrote:

Possible? Yes.  Probable? No.  Most email passes through 4 servers: the sender's
mail server, sender's firewall, receiver's firewall, and the receiver's mail
server.  It also passes through about 100 (or more) routers along the way.
Routers ain't servers, and hardly qualify as "computers" in the conventional
sense.

Simple encryption isn't enough.  If you send e-mail to chris cosman at
chris@microcosman I as the system administrator can intercept that message and
have all the time in the world to work on the encryption.

  You have all the time left in your life.  The vast majority of system
admins haven't got access to the type of equipment it takes to crack (in their
remaining lifetime) even mediocre encryption (DES56 for example).

So simply subscribing to hushmail.com can still give the people at hushmail a
look at things.  There is nothing secure about the internet, never will be
because it is such an open architecture.

There are many, many e-commerce vendors that would beg to differ.  I agree that
standard sendmail isn't secure. There are ways of making one's email secure,
however.

But that is what makes it cool.  No rules ('cept common sense)

  Not even common sense prevails.  :-)

Russell Kent

 
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