From: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>
To: Roland Winkler <winkler@gnu.org>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: more on starttls, gnutls-cli and using tls for mail
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 12:23:09 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87bovsj72q.fsf@red-bean.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87ty9kpl2q.fsf@niu.edu> (Roland Winkler's message of "Sun, 14 Aug 2011 01:24:13 -0500")
Roland Winkler <winkler@gnu.org> writes:
>> I've been thinking that lately too.
>>
>> First, the fact that .authinfo is created world-readable just seems
>> like a clear bug. Also easy to fix (sorry, I don't have patch, but
>> I could come up with one if we all agree this is a straight bug).
>
>See bug #9113. So yes, I agree that this is a bug. See also bug
>#7487 where some issues related to .authinfo were discussed: Under
>certain circumstances Gnus needed to repeatedly decrypt
>~/.authinfo.gpg, which requires the gpg passphrase. Yet I do not find it
>justified to make an unencrypted ~/.authinfo the default because of such
>a nuisance. If at all, I believe it should be the other way round: the
>default should be ~/.authinfo.gpg. If someone doesn't like that for
>whatever reason, he or she can change that in the init file.
Bug #9113 is slightly different from what T.V. and I were saying. #9113
suggests solving the exposure problem through encryption, and then #7487
has a long discussion about what kind of encryption it should be --
public key or symmetric -- how the user interface should work, etc.
But I think T.V. and I are just saying: "In the plaintext case, let's at
least make the file non-world-readable!"
Offering encryption is great, but it's also very complex and error-prone
(as the bug reports show). There will always be a plaintext case, since
users cannot be required to have GPG-like software installed. In the
plaintext case, we could behave better than we do.
But it sounds like we probably agree on this too, and I should just make
the change :-).
Separately, I think it's bad that we removed the Elisp-based API for
passing this authn information, since some people (like me) are already
using Elisp to fetch the auth creds securely from elsewhere, and having
to dynamically construct a ~/.authinfo file as a means of passing that
information *to other Elisp* is, shall we say, a really poor API.
There's no reason we can't have both `smtpmail-auth-credentials' and
~/.authinfo (or ~/.authinfo.foo), and simply fall try the former when
the latter is unavailable.
However, that's a larger change, or semi-reversion. I don't know if it
would be accepted; I guess it belongs in a distinct thread.
-K
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-08-14 16:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 50+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-08-14 1:19 more on starttls, gnutls-cli and using tls for mail T. V. Raman
2011-08-14 1:26 ` Karl Fogel
2011-08-14 3:40 ` Leo
2011-08-14 5:42 ` Karl Fogel
2011-08-14 12:02 ` Vijay Lakshminarayanan
2011-08-14 21:07 ` Leo
2011-08-15 3:53 ` Vijay Lakshminarayanan
2011-08-15 4:27 ` Leo
2011-08-15 7:41 ` Vijay Lakshminarayanan
2011-08-15 6:03 ` Tim Cross
2011-08-15 7:38 ` Vijay Lakshminarayanan
2011-08-17 1:54 ` Tim Cross
2011-08-17 14:28 ` Karl Fogel
2011-08-17 22:48 ` Tim Cross
2011-08-18 0:33 ` chad
2011-08-18 3:11 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2011-08-17 17:27 ` Vijay Lakshminarayanan
2011-08-15 7:47 ` Richard Riley
2011-08-15 9:21 ` David Engster
2011-08-17 2:03 ` Tim Cross
2011-08-17 7:03 ` David Engster
2011-08-15 16:25 ` Dimitri Fontaine
2011-08-16 9:33 ` Leo
2011-08-16 10:12 ` Dimitri Fontaine
2011-08-17 2:13 ` Tim Cross
2011-08-17 1:08 ` Richard Riley
2011-08-14 6:24 ` Roland Winkler
2011-08-14 6:32 ` Roland Winkler
2011-08-14 16:23 ` Karl Fogel [this message]
2011-08-15 15:21 ` Roland Winkler
2011-08-17 2:09 ` Tim Cross
2011-09-25 13:08 ` Ted Zlatanov
2011-09-25 17:26 ` Karl Fogel
2011-09-26 17:22 ` Ted Zlatanov
2011-09-27 15:28 ` Karl Fogel
2011-08-17 21:06 ` Multiple SMTP accounts with smtpmail.el (was: more on starttls, gnutls-cli and using tls for mail) Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
2011-08-18 3:19 ` Multiple SMTP accounts with smtpmail.el Leo
2011-08-18 14:20 ` Karl Fogel
2011-08-18 16:41 ` Vijay Lakshminarayanan
2011-08-19 14:42 ` Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
2011-08-21 2:13 ` Karl Fogel
2011-08-21 4:16 ` Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
2011-08-22 7:22 ` Glenn Morris
2011-09-25 13:10 ` Ted Zlatanov
2011-09-26 18:06 ` Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
2011-09-26 19:24 ` Ted Zlatanov
2011-09-25 22:46 ` Rasmus
2011-08-14 17:12 ` more on starttls, gnutls-cli and using tls for mail Chong Yidong
2011-08-17 20:58 ` Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2011-08-14 2:10 raman
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