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Comment by doener | Hacker News Reader

Here is a description how it works: https://posteo.de/en/blog/new-easy-email-encryption-with-aut...

>>The manual exchange and management of keys – which users often perceive as complicated – is becoming superfluous: Prior to the first encrypted communication, a regular empty email (without content) is sent. With this, the key is transferred in the background. Henceforth, messages can be encrypted automatically.

doesn't sound like they solved the key exchange problem. they merely changed it to trust on first use.

Which is a common compromise and frankly more useful than the web-of-trust model, as long as users understand the limitation and verify once offline.

It's still unclear to me how this works if you use more than one email client.

This seems like a good use case for keybase.io. They've implemented their own proof of concept messaging system, but I have yet to see any third party integrate with the service.

keybase.io is another centralized third party which, like Signal, we should be trying to move away from rather than becoming more dependent on. By relying on the DNS (which is already trusted to make email, keybase.io, and Signal work), every service provider can be in control of the keys they are publishing.

Also, keybase.io, being centralized, isn't as auditable as the DNS, but admittedly there is work being done on both DNSSEC transparency:

http://blog.huque.com/2014/07/dnssec-key-transparency.html

and keybase.io publishing to the bitcoin blockchain:

https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitco...

I'd say that it's only quasi centralized. At its core, keybase is a directory of signed statements posted on social media. Where space permits, these statements include the person's public key. Verifications can be checked directly on Facebook, Twitter, etc. without using keybase, somewhat decentralizing the service. As you mentioned, writing to blockchain pulls keybase further out of the equation.

They're more of a facilitator for other applications -- Signal is a packaged application itself.

There are complementary technologies which largely address the key exchange problem, such as RFC-7929:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7929

This is already supported by email providers like Posteo since 2015:

https://posteo.de/en/blog/new-posteo-public-key-directory

They also recently added support for Autocrypt itself, as linked above.

And that still defends against the biggest howler with email, that in raw form it is a post card, not a enveloped letter.

The issue if trusting that the sender is who is being claimed is a very different issue, and one that i don't think anyone had solved yet beyond cumbersome exchange procedures (possibly involving locked suitcases).

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