[Resolved] Email service network problems

We are currently experiencing problems with either our network or our firewall, and all Runbox email services are currently unavailable.

Our system administrators are working to correct the problem. Meanwhile, any incoming email will be queued on other servers for later delivery.

Our web and domain hosting services are not affected by this problem.

UPDATE 23:50 CET: A power strip inside a server rack had died, causing the firewall server to go down. We expect this to be resolved shortly.

UPDATE 23:51 CET: Problem has been resolved and email services are back online.

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Email Encryption with Runbox

There has been much talk in the media recently about using email encryption to avoid surveillance and monitoring. In this article we help you understand what email encryption is, how it works, and the options that are available to you as a Runbox customer.

Summary of this Article

  • Email communication involves at least a sending email client, a sending email server, a receiving email server, and a receiving email client.
  • Email communication between client and server is typically encrypted using basic encryption methods such as TLS or SSL.
  • In addition to this, you can use end-to-end encryption with any email service — and we show you how to use encryption with Runbox.

First, the Basics

Email Communication
Email Communication
The client establishes a connection with the sending server, which passes the message on to the receiving server from which the recipient downloads the message.

In order to understand how email encryption works, we need to cover the basics of email communication. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it non-technical and it’s pretty simple.

To send an email to someone, 4 things are usually needed (in addition to the Internet itself):

  1. A sending email client such as Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird.
    An email client is a program or app, which is running on a computer, tablet, or smart phone. When you use a webmail service such as Runbox Webmail, your browser acts as the email client. Whatever it’s called, it’s the program you use to write your email messages.
  2. A sending email server such as Runbox.
    When you use Runbox your email client connects to our servers, which takes care of figuring out where on the Internet the recipient is located. More correctly, it looks up the domain name part of the recipient’s email address and connects to the servers responsible for that domain name.
  3. A receiving email server such as Gmail.
    The receiving email server accepts the message and stores it until the recipient downloads it to her email client.
  4. A receiving email client such as Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird.
    Similar to the sending email client, the recipient uses an email program to send and receive email. The email client regularly connects to the receiving email server to check for new email, and usually keeps a copy of the messages on the server so that they are available to other devices the recipient may be using.

Standard Email Encryption

Encrypted Communication
Encrypted Communication
The server presents a valid SSL/TLS certificate and the encrypted connection is indicated by a padlock and green bar in the browser.

The email communication between the client and server (#1 and #2 above) is already encrypted by default if you are using the recommended settings. When using Runbox Webmail encryption is always enabled, which you can tell by the padlock in the address bar and the web address starting with “https” (where the “s” stands for secure).

This type of encryption is called Transport Layer Security or TLS for short (which has succeeded Secure Sockets Layer, SSL) and protects your data from being eavesdropped on its way from your email client to our servers.

After accepting the message for relay, the Runbox outbound email server then looks up the email service responsible for the recipient’s domain name and connects to one of their servers. Runbox always attempts to establish an encrypted connection using TLS, but many services do not support such connections yet.

After connecting to the receiving server (#3 above), Runbox hands over the message for further processing.

The final step (#4 above) between the receiving email server and the recipient is usually encrypted, but it depends on the encryption support of the receiving email service’s servers and the settings in the recipient’s email client. More details: Secure Transfer of Email

Why this type of encryption isn’t sufficient

In other words, there is no way of knowing whether the communication is actually encrypted all the way from you to the recipient. Although some email services provide encrypted email storage, this doesn’t resolve the problem of unencrypted connections further down the message’s path.

In the event that someone was able to eavesdrop on communication encrypted using SSL/TLS, they would in principle not be able to decrypt the contents without somehow accessing the private encryption key which is only stored on the provider’s servers (unless Perfect Forward Secrecy was implemented, which is the case with Runbox).

However, this type of encryption is still theoretically vulnerable to surveillance because the encryption standards used have been developed in cooperation with US intelligence agencies, although any such weakening has been denied by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

End-to-end encryption of email

End-To-End Encryption
End-To-End Encryption
Sender and recipient have exchanged encryption keys and the communication is encrypted from end to end, in addition to the SSL/TLS encryption which is attempted established by the sending server.

The best solution available is to add another layer of encryption on the email communication all the way from sender to recipient. This is called end-to-end encryption and is already available for use with virtually any email service or provider.

When using end-to-end encryption, the contents of messages will be unreadable to a potential eavesdropper all the way from sender to recipient. It is of course always important that the two parties take great caution to secure their computers or devices to prevent them from being compromised.

Note that the metadata (sender and recipient addresses, subject line, timestamp, etc) of email messages is always unencrypted in order for the message to be routed to its recipient.

There are two main email encryption standards available: PGP and S/MIME. This may look cryptographic in itself, but we will explain both of them. Runbox supports both standards, which can be used with an email client or with Runbox Webmail.

See Encrypting Your Runbox Email for an overview of email clients and their encryption support.

PGP: Pretty Good Privacy

Despite the name, PGP is considered to be cryptographically very strong and is probably the most popular email encryption standard today.

PGP is the easiest encryption standard to get started with because it doesn’t involve anyone but the sender and recipient of a message. It is based on a “web of trust” because it only involves the sender and recipient and assumes that they trust each other.

  • Both parties must have a PGP enabled email client or webmail service.
  • The sender must have generated a private/public encryption key pair using software that is downloaded and installed locally.
  • The recipient must have downloaded the sender’s public key, because the recipient’s public key is used by the sender to encrypt the message. The recipient’s private key is used to decrypt the message.
  • Can be used with webmail services with a web browser.

To get started, see our Encrypting and Securing Email Using OpenPGP help page.

S/MIME: Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions

S/MIME is a standard being adopted by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and requires some more preparation on the part of the email user.

  • S/MIME functionality is built into most major email client programs.
  • Both parties must have an S/MIME enabled email client.
  • A certificate must be obtained from a Certificate Authority and installed in the sender’s email client.
  • Is based on a “chain of trust” because the Certificate Authority validates the sender’s identity and makes the public key available to others.
  • Is not suitable for use with webmail services using a web browser.

We hope this article helped you understand how email encryption works and how to get started using it. And as always, please contact us if you have any questions.

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Email, Encryption and Data Surveillance

As each day goes by there seem to be new revelations about which countries are spying on each other, or have secret agreements to monitor traffic by putting “taps” on strategically important cables entering or leaving countries. It is hard to keep track of all this information, and even harder to verify what is fact and what is speculation.

Questions, questions!

If you care about your data or email and whether it is private or not, then all of this should bother you; in fact it should bother you quite a lot. But how do you make sense of it all, and what action can you take, assuming you can take action that is? Which countries will look after your data best? And who can actually read your email as it is delivered to and from your email provider?

At Runbox we get asked a lot of questions like the ones above, and we have come to the conclusion that often we are worrying about the wrong things.

Who are the players in this real-life James Bond story?

five-eyesThe United States National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have featured heavily in the media, and along with three other countries (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) they make up the so called “Five Eyes” countries that are known to be monitoring communications.

These countries have an agreement to share data that they collect through their extensive networks. This is not speculation, this is hard fact in the public domain, and together they form the single biggest data sharing network ever conceived. The allegations that they spy on each others citizens and then share data with each other to get around domestic regulations relating to spying on your own citizens is one of the most controversial claims that have been made in the last few years.

There are other revelations that suggest many countries also have agreements with the NSA and GCHQ in return for various kind of technological assistance that might benefit the collaborating nation.

More recently, and closer to home for Runbox, we have seen allegations that Denmark is monitoring data entering and leaving Norway, and that Sweden is pretty much in league with the NSA about as much as the other “five eyes” countries. At a glance this can seem worrying given that Runbox is based in Norway.

But does it really matter?

Data everywhere, and no place to hide

surveillanceOn a political front it probably does matter, but on a practical level if you email someone who is outside of Norway the chances are the data passes through a number of countries and worrying about the ones geographically adjacent to Norway seems a little pointless. For example, if you email anyone on Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud or any of the other major providers, the chance is your data is going to end up in the one country that is at the centre of the recent revelations – the USA.

The reason we get asked questions about security is because people want to take positive action to protect their data, so what can you actually do?

Stored email and data

The question about which email provider will protect your data best when it is on their servers is a separate issue to the one surrounding your data when it is being transferred from one place to another. In respect of your email provider, you are better to keep your email data in a country that has strong privacy laws, and with a provider that tries to encrypt the transfer of that data to and from your account. Runbox is based in a country that does have strong privacy laws, and we always try to encrypt your data when transferring it to and from your account.

So choosing an email provider isn’t too difficult once you know what to look for.

So what about data transfer?

Given that we know agencies are monitoring Internet communications (it doesn’t matter how much or little of this is going on) it is best to assume that anything that you do on the Internet, or anything you email can be monitored by someone. You can think of this as being like sending a private message on a postcard through the usual mail where everyone including the post office and your family can read the postcard.

Fundamentally the data that makes up your email can be read by any server it passes through on its way to its destination. Mail servers also write information to their hard drives and then use that data when sending your email on to the next destination. This means that temporary copies of your email are also made!

There is very little you can do about this, it’s how email works.

Email-EncryptionAn obvious solution to prevent prying eyes from reading your email is to use some sort of code that only the sender and recipient can decode, and that is exactly what encryption is. If you encrypt a message with a strong enough key then it is currently not possible for anyone to read it without having the private key and passphrase. For now we will ignore allegations that encryption has been subverted by governments as it is clear that strong encryption does still work adequately.

Regardless of whether you encrypt messages yourself, Runbox attempts to encrypt your email when it sends to and receives email from other providers on your behalf. This is an important security feature, but it isn’t universally used and even some major email providers do not offer this kind of encryption. Where it is not offered your email is delivered unencrypted and it is just as vulnerable to interception then as a postcard is.

End-to-end encryption

Email is about 40 years old, and it hasn’t changed much in all that time. For decades computer security experts have been aware of the insecure nature of email, which is why email encryption has been around for about half the time email has existed. Encrypting your enigmail_gnupg_thunderbirdemail is not a new idea at all, but as a proportion of email sent very little is encrypted by the sender.

The best overall solution is to encrypt the message before it leaves your computer and not rely on anyone else to protect the data for you. The data can then only be decrypted at the recipients end if the correct key is available and the passphrase for that key is known. This is called end-to-end encryption.

There are various ways in which you can encrypt your email, some involve email client (app/program) like Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail and others are integrated in to the webmail service of email providers.

You don’t need to be an expert to encrypt your email

Encrypting your email is not as difficult as you might think, but you might need to make some changes to how you use email.

We are used to having a very wide variety of email providers at our fingertips, and encryption isn’t necessarily going to be compatible with all of those various interfaces. Elsewhere on this blog and on the Runbox help website we explain some of the easier ways to implement strong email encryption that can be used with most email providers.

Yes, you are going to have to give your friends, family and colleagues keys so they can decrypt email and also send encrypted email to you, but is that really much more difficult than having to give them a key to get in to your home (assuming you want them in your home that is)?

If you encrypt your email it won’t matter what revelations are in the news next week, only you and your recipients will be able to read your email. Unless of course the revelations are about encryption having been compromised…

For more information

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[Completed] Email Alias Quota Increased to 100

In order to further simplify our price plans and improve our offering we have decided to increase the email alias quota of all account subscriptions to 100 (except the Max plan which already has it).

This change has already taken effect, which you can tell from the Alias Administration screen.

If you are wondering what an email alias is and what it can be used for, it’s basically an alternative email address pointing to your Runbox account. This is very useful in order to manage identities/profiles, especially if you host a domain with Runbox.

For more information and tips, head over to our help page on Aliases!

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