Clayton's Tech Bits

Home

Contact

Resumé / C.V.

Links

Search this site:

Categories:

/ (224)
  Admin/ (86)
    Apache/ (7)
      HTTPS-SSL/ (4)
    Cherokee/ (1)
    LAN/ (4)
    LVM/ (3)
    Monitoring/ (2)
      munin/ (2)
    OpenVPN/ (1)
    SSH-Proxy/ (3)
    SSH-SSL/ (6)
    backups/ (16)
      SpiderOak/ (1)
      backuppc/ (5)
      dirvish/ (1)
      misc/ (6)
      rdiff-backup/ (1)
      rsync/ (1)
      unison/ (1)
    commandLine/ (11)
    crontab/ (1)
    databases/ (8)
      MSSQL/ (2)
      MySQL/ (5)
      PostgreSQL/ (1)
    dynamicDNS/ (2)
    email/ (9)
      Dovecot/ (1)
      deliverability/ (1)
      misc/ (1)
      postfix/ (6)
    iptables/ (2)
    virtualization/ (8)
      VMware/ (1)
      virtualBox/ (7)
  Coding/ (11)
    bash/ (1)
    gdb/ (1)
    git/ (2)
    php/ (4)
    python/ (3)
      Django/ (1)
  Education/ (1)
  Hosting/ (23)
    Amazon/ (14)
      EBS/ (3)
      EC2/ (11)
    Godaddy/ (2)
    NearlyFreeSpeech/ (3)
    Rackspace/ (1)
    vpslink/ (3)
  Linux/ (20)
    Awesome/ (3)
    CPUfreq/ (1)
    Chinese/ (1)
    Debian/ (5)
      WPA/ (1)
    audio/ (1)
    encryption/ (2)
    fonts/ (1)
    misc/ (4)
    router-bridge/ (2)
  SW/ (39)
    browser/ (2)
      Chrome/ (1)
      Firefox/ (1)
    business/ (25)
      Drupal/ (8)
      KnowledgeTree/ (6)
      Redmine/ (2)
      SugarCRM/ (6)
      WebERP/ (2)
      eGroupware/ (1)
    email/ (1)
    fileSharing/ (1)
      mldonkey/ (1)
    graphics/ (2)
    research/ (2)
    website/ (6)
      blog/ (6)
        blosxom/ (3)
        rss2email/ (1)
        webgen/ (1)
  Security/ (12)
    IMchat/ (1)
    circumvention/ (2)
    e-mail/ (4)
    greatFirewall/ (1)
    hacking/ (1)
    password/ (1)
    privacy/ (1)
    skype/ (1)
  Services/ (1)
    fileSharing/ (1)
  TechWriting/ (1)
  xHW/ (13)
    Lenovo/ (1)
    Motorola_A1200/ (2)
    Thinkpad_600e/ (1)
    Thinkpad_a21m/ (3)
    Thinkpad_i1300/ (1)
    Thinkpad_x24/ (1)
    USB_audio/ (1)
    scanner/ (1)
    wirelessCards/ (2)
  xLife/ (17)
    China/ (9)
      Beijing/ (5)
        OpenSource/ (3)
    Expatriation/ (1)
    Vietnam/ (7)

Archives:

2012/03

2012/01

2011/12

2011/11

2011/10

2011/09

2011/08

2011/07

2011/06

2011/05

2011/04

2011/02

2010/12

2010/11

2010/10

2010/09

2010/08

2010/07

2010/06

2010/05

2010/04

2010/03

2010/02

2010/01

2009/12

2009/11

2009/10

2009/09

2009/08

2009/07

2009/06

2009/05

2009/04

2009/03

2009/02

2009/01

2008/12

2008/11

2008/10

2008/09

Subscribe XML RSS Feed

Sat, 14 Nov 2009

---

/Security/e-mail: lockbin.com Has a Reasonable Solution for E-Mail Security

lockbin.com[1] has a reasonable method for restoring some security to the e-mail arena. The service is a little bit inconvenient so it does not qualify for daily use, but especially when you are dealing with someone who resists taking any precautions at all, this might be quite a good solution.

To use lockbin you first deliver a shared password to the other person, preferably by some means other then the same e-mail address lockbin is going to use to announce the arrival of a message. Then on lockbin's SSL-encrypted (https) website compose and send your message.

The recipient receives an e-mail which says, in part:

"Hopefully, your friend has already given you a special 'Secret Word', which will un-encrypt the message so you can read it."

containing a link back to his waiting message on the lockbin website. The recipient must then enter the 'Secret Word' to see the message. If he wishes, the recipient can then reply to you using lockbin again, in the same window.

Needless to say there are some security holes in this arrangement, like the need to trust the system administrators of lockbin, and the need to send the password by some preferably secure channel.

[1] https://lockbin.com/

posted at: 10:02 | path: /Security/e-mail | permanent link to this entry