How to secure your mail?

[Детективное агентство ИКС-Инфо.]

To this topic...
(almost in Odessa)

How to secure your mail (and not only) when mailings "joke"
anywhere and as they like ????
The only thing that comes to mind is Eve’s words: “Well, of course, to think where, what you leave for the enemy to access.”
Yours faithfully

 

[Kuznecov.Igorj]

Andrey Hello! Question. But do we have completely secret information or secret? This is not provided for in the laws, so is it worth it to play counterintelligence? Igor

 

[Агентство. PrivacyGuard.]

Good afternoon, colleagues!

In general, there are no completely protected things. So it all depends on the value of the information and the means you have to protect it, and the villain for hacking. In general, active mailboxes (which are used) on mail servers such as Mail.ru, Gmail, etc. break. And it’s not very difficult. It is enough to send the "correct letter" and the client to open it. And that’s all. Password in your pocket. If you need to transfer something electronically, it is easier to write in Word and archive it with rar'om with a password longer than 8 characters and the checkbox "Encryption of file names". This will already be sufficient protection against the majority. If you want to provide a secure exchange within the company or with a finite number of subscribers, you can use ViPNeT Custom solutions from Infotex ([DLMURL] https://www.infotecs.ru/products/line/custom.php [/ DLMURL]) or similar.

 

[Детективное агентство Оренбург ОДБ]

First of all, I would like to immediately note the security of email services on various web servers: the most unprotected in increasing order, starting with the most "leaky" one: rambler.ru; mail.ru; yandex.ru; gmail.com (these are the most popular, others have not been tested). I only want to note positively gmail.com - “hacking” is very difficult, plus it does not apply to the zone of the “.ru” national domain, which means it’s practically impossible to delve into your mailbox (for the rest, you only need a court order, well, in what cases it can be said I won’t get it, everyone has operational experience, you yourself know). Plus, on all these mail web servers, there are administrators (including duty administrators), and these are people who are more likely to "break through" than electronic protection. Hence the conclusion: if you want a secure mailbox that is not controlled by "third" parties, start your own mail server. Most have their own sites, which means (as far as I know, this is included in the services provided and in payment for using a domain name) 5 free mailboxes of the format ivan@gradus.ru (where ivan is the unique username and gradus.ru is the domain name of your site). In this case, the responsibility for mail security lies with the site administrator and his professionalism. If you need more mailboxes, you must already install a mail server (from personal experience I can recommend for Windows: MDaemon and Kerio are easy to use and reliable, with qualified administration they are practically “impenetrable”, I don’t know for Linux). Of course, there were cases of hacking and mail servers (as well as sites), but this is already more a question for the professionalism of admins.
I would also like to note methods of protection against programs like Brutus. Though stupid, they can shoot a stick once a year. The main principle of the work of such programs is the enumeration of words, characters from the existing dictionary, for this reason they are very limited in their capabilities - how many options you have scored in the dictionary, how many options the program will try. In this regard, they are very easy to deceive: use numbers and letters as a password; entering a passphrase in another layout (if the word is Russian, then in the English layout and vice versa); adding a punctuation mark at the end or beginning of a passphrase ... You can still give a bunch of methods, but these are the simplest and most reliable. I would also like to note that a combination of the above methods significantly enhances protection, but it still does not save rambler, mail, yandex, gmail from security holes. I won’t talk about holes (I don’t work for them and they don’t pay me for this), and believe me enough. Either they don’t have a specialist in this field at all, either he is an amateur or the Russian mentality (well, they’ve stolen the box, well, the cant is safe, who should you show it to?) ... Using mail.ru as an example, I experimentally tried to understand the problem of box theft, “polite message nah ”- there is no other way to call the reaction. “Why spend money on the security of free mailboxes? Hijacked? Get another one ... ”- this is what these services should have. So think and decide for yourself ...

 

[частный детектив Кременчуг]

If you need more mailboxes, you must already install a mail server (from personal experience I can recommend for Windows: MDaemon and Kerio are easy to use and reliable, with qualified administration they are practically “impenetrable”, I don’t know for Linux). Of course, there were cases of hacking and mail servers (as well as sites), but this is already more a question for the professionalism of admins.

I completely agree with the colleague. I want to add: there are hosting providers providing mail with the name @ site domain, access to setting up mail and checking is obtained by lowering the registry entries for email clients, it is also possible not to leave letters on the hosting, but forward them to your server. You can also attach gmail to a domain. It is enough to register the settings in the DNS domain.

 

[Агентство. PrivacyGuard.]

В .......... The main principle of the work of such programs is the enumeration of words, characters from the existing dictionary, for this reason they are very limited in their capabilities - how many options you have scored in the dictionary, so many options the program will try. In this regard, they are very easy to deceive: use numbers and letters as a password; entering a passphrase in another layout (if the word is Russian, then in the English layout and vice versa); adding a punctuation mark at the end or beginning of a passphrase ... You can still give a bunch of methods, but these are the simplest and most reliable. ...

Let me disagree. Just using numbers and letters is certainly good and right, and using a different layout too. However, this will not confuse modern programs. If you use a dictionary word as a password. They can try words with a change of layout and automatically add numbers. In addition, they know that some use the replacement of some letters with numbers. For example, the letter O is replaced by the number 0, the letter Z by the number 3, etc. After all, password guessing programs are written by the same people who invent and use passwords.

As a result, the use of all these methods is necessary and correct. However, you should not choose a word from the dictionary as a password, data related to you (name, date of birth, nicknames, etc.), etc. Use, for example, one of the simplest rules. Take a certain line of the type: At the seashore, the oak is green, the golden chain is on that oak. Next, from this line, take the first letters of the words: Uldzzzndt. Replace the letter z with the number 3. Save the comma in the middle. Get: Uld3,3tsndt. It will be much more difficult to cope with such a password. You can also change the layout. At the same time, remembering the password does not cause big problems. Here is a resource for assessing password strength. https://www.passwordmeter.com/ .

And as I said before and the colleague above, use your mail server. Just find a good admin to configure everything correctly.
If this option is not suitable for some reason, then use mail services. But follow security rules, such as not opening mail from unknown senders, do not follow links, disable image downloading, etc.

 

[Oberon]

Maybe I’m not too versed in cryptography, but the experience of using a computer for various purposes (including operational ones) already from the 1998 shaggy year allows me, perhaps unreasonably brazenly, to advise:
1. Have more than 10 mailboxes at a time (now I have 18 of them). If one of them is lost, nothing changes dramatically. It is simply that the code word agreed upon with the respondent is inserted in the letter in order to identify the correspondent.
2. Only encrypted archives are sent.
3. As passwords for archives phrases from texts of books are used. A find in the form of the text of the Qur'an was very useful for me. For example, a password that I successfully used for about 2 years looked like this: fkm [fvlekbkkz. It is written in a Latin layout, but in Cyrillic. Try typing. The result is an Arabic phrase. Any program running on associative principles will break the brain. Checked in a few. Direct enumeration time of 1.5 years. I want to clarify that this applies to encrypted archives and encrypted Word documents. For breaking boxes, a different principle is used.
For almost 10 years I have broken one box on ... @ mail.ru . Nothing terrible happened, I just immediately switched to the backup .com domain.
Just do not bother with this. It's not that bad.

 

[@InfoPoisk]

WELL DONE.
+1

 

[Oberon]

BRAVO.
+1

Thank. I share what I know.

 

[@InfoPoisk]

I just use similar methods myself. : D