Dark Mail: Privacy and Protocol Design

Architecture and Background

Dark Mail is not the only solution in the secure mail space, but just as Lavabit’s preoccupation with privacy and user autonomy was a rarity when it started over a decade ago, it hopes once again to push mail security forward into a new frontier. Ladar Levison, Stephen Watt contextualize these mechanics within the broader privacy landscape.

Vulnerability Analysis

The analysis investigates key threat vectors and design shortcomings related to dark-mail, email-encryption, privacy, cryptography, secure-communications.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Dark Mail is not the only solution in the secure mail space, but just as Lavabit’s preoccupation with privacy and user autonomy was a rarity when it started over a decade ago, it hopes once again to push mail security forward into a new frontier. It is Dark Mail's objective to achieve the highest degree of security possible - with the introduction of an interoperable mail protocol as an open standard. To that end, we are publishing documents describing the protocol, along with a reference implementations of the client and server under a free software license.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Defenders and researchers are provided actionable defensive mitigations, monitoring telemetry, and configuration safeguards to minimize systemic risk.