
Hosted S/MIME by Google provides enhanced security for Gmail in the enterprise - dbarlett
https://security.googleblog.com/2017/02/hosted-smime-by-google-provides.html
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jasonjayr
Now that Google is shooting to be their own CA, couldn't they mass-generate
S/MIME certificates for all their users?

Even if the sender and receiver is Google-hosted, they could still encrypt
mail, so it's encrypted at rest if it's copied from a user's gmail account to
their local mail via pop/imap? And, since Google would be generating the
private key, they could also decrypt it server-side in their secure
environment, do whatever scanning for advertising/spam classification, and
still deliver the same product?

As other users have pointed out, if you're trying to protect against an
adversarial Google, you've already lost by using gmail. If you're going to
trust them with message composition software, and transport, just go in whole-
hog.

As far as I can tell, Google seems to have their security ducks in a row, and
take this stuff seriously. Deployed correctly this could be another "raising
the bar" event on email security, and help mitigate against servers still not
requiring tls/ssl on port 25.

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irq-1
Not only should they mass create keys for all accounts, but they should make
(other/more) keys available _for any purpose_. An open system where most email
addresses come with a set of keys would enable many types of encryption
systems (file sharing, login, messaging, etc...) Users would still have keys
managed by Google (or IT, or their webmail host) so they don't have to
understand key management, and they'd have someone to call when things break.

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compuguy
FYI, this is only supported by the G Suite Enterprise tier, Business and Basic
do not have S/MIME support.

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RKearney
> To use hosted S/MIME, companies need to upload their own certificates (with
> private keys) to Gmail, which can be done by end users via Gmail settings or
> by admins in bulk via the Gmail API.

So this is just to give the illusion of privacy and security then?

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advisedwang
It gives protection against eavesdropping of messages in transit, so it's
better than nothing (Even SSL+SMTP allows email relays to see the email in the
clear). However it does not protect against an attacker who gets into your
GMail, does not protect against warrents/NSLs/subpoenas against Google, does
not protect against your domain admin accessing your message.

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cvwright
I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with the parent comment.

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euyyn
It's detailing that it does provide real privacy and security protections
against some scenarios, even if not against all scenarios.

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legulere
> end users have to manually install certificates to their email applications

This really is a problem that could be reduced. For instance there is no easy
way to copy the S/Mime certificate from my macbook to my iPhone

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epistasis
It's been several years since I experimented with this, but I recall that
S/MIME on an iPhone was much easier to setup than GPG anywhere else, including
the desktop. I think I used a USB transfer, but googling now shows guides that
allow emailing a password encrypted p12 file.

CA and Web of Trust both require verifying the key fingerprints of yo want to
be serious about it, but smime was much more easy to use overall.

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mtgx
I wonder if Google is starting to get worried about services such as
ProtonMail.

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compuguy
I doubt it, since S/MIME is only for the highest G Suite tier, Enterprise.

