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bug #18893: Can passwords not be store in plaintext in mailbox.xml

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Sat 27 Jan 2007 11:52:10 PM UTC
   
 
Severity:  1 - Wish Status:  Wont Fix
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Originator Name:  Originator Email:  -email is unavailable-
Open/Closed:  Closed

Jump to the original submission

Mon 05 Mar 2007 01:16:49 AM UTC, comment #6: 

I regret that you (and also the Gaim developers) feel such distain for imperfect/incomplete/selective security that you prefer to punish your users by giving them no security at all.  In my less-than-perfect world, I am very glad that the developers of Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird see things differently.

But reasonable people can disagree, as do you and I.  Arguments on both sides are subjective (me: "If I had to choose", you: "I believe", etc.).  It is unfortunate that we were unable to come to agreement.

Case closed.

Ben Liblit <liblit>
Mon 05 Mar 2007 12:49:12 AM UTC, comment #5: 

Your arguments are rather subjective. I believe that most people value the confidentiality of their personal data as much as that of their passwords. Given that assumption, for a majority of people, encrypting passwords is between useless and insufficient.

The gnome-keyring paradigm (passwords are worthy of encryption and everything else is not) is obviously flawed, and I therefore don't intend to support it.

Jean-Yves Lefort <jylefort>
Group administrator
Sun 04 Mar 2007 11:00:06 PM UTC, comment #4: 

Several of my mail passwords are really account passwords, in the sense that they control access to more than just a single mailbox.  These passwords govern access to outside resources, such as other computers, services, and file systems.  That makes them significantly more sensitive than any other piece of data in my local file system.

Honestly, if I had to choose between revealing the contents of my mail spool (which is cached in the local file system) and revealing my mail password, I would prefer to leak my mail spool.  My mail passwords are significantly more sensitive than the contents of my INBOX at any moment in time.

Given that passwords are more sensitive than most other data in the local file system, it is perfectly reasonable to place stronger protections around them.

Futhermore, passwords are few in number and individually small, so strong encryption of passwords may be more reasonable from a performance standpoint than a completely encrypted home directory.  From a technical/deployment standpoint, it is also much easier to integrate encryption into the access-control parts of selected applications than it is to roll out real kernel-supported encrypted file systems.

So, to sum up: (1) passwords are more sensitive than other file system data and therefore warrant stronger protections, and (2) ecrypting passwords is quite practical from a technical standpoint whereas encrypting an entire home directory is nice in theory, but problematic in practice.

Jean-Yves, it sounds like you have a basic philosophical objection to password encryption.  You keep answering every request with "Why, why, why?"  Can you tell us why you think this is a bad idea?  What is your objection?  You apparently have one or several concerns, but have not yet articulated any.  I'm trying to present my rationale as clearly as possible.  Please do the same.

Ben Liblit <liblit>
Sun 04 Mar 2007 10:41:34 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Why do you think that encrypting stored passwords is useful (that is, compared to encrypting your entire home directory)?

Note that Gmail passwords are managed by gnome-keyring simply because that functionality is provided by gnomevfs (which MN uses to retrieve the Gmail XML feed) and libgnomeui.

Jean-Yves Lefort <jylefort>
Group administrator
Sun 04 Mar 2007 09:40:13 PM UTC, comment #2: 

GNOME Keyring would be ideal for this.  In fact, GNOME Keyring is already used to remember passwords for any Gmail mailboxes configured in Mail Notification.  I was surprised to find that other mailbox types don't use this service.  Why Gmail and not POP, IMAP, etc.?

Regarding Jean-Yves Lefort's "Why?" question....  Simply obfuscating the password in a file doesn't help any if it can be un-obfuscated just as easily.  But a secure password keeper like GNOME Keyring isn't just obfuscating.  GNOME Keyring offers single-signon convenience, good desktop integration, strong cryptographic security, and a second layer of protection beyond file system permissions.

In my humble opinion, GNOME Keyring is the perfect tool for this job.

Ben Liblit <liblit>
Sun 28 Jan 2007 12:02:16 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Why?

Jean-Yves Lefort <jylefort>
Group administrator
Sat 27 Jan 2007 11:52:10 PM UTC, original submission:  

I'm using mail-notification v2.0 from the ubuntu dapper repositories. I noticed the passwords are stored in plaintext in ~/.gnome2/mail-notification/mailboxes.xml

Is it possible to not store them not as plaintext, but do something like the fetchyahoo package does with hashed passwords.

Thanks.

Anonymous

 

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  • -email is unavailable- added by liblit (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by jylefort (Posted a comment)
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    Follow 3 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2007-03-05 jylefort StatusNeed Info Wont Fix
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2007-01-28 jylefort StatusNone Need Info

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