[Mailman-Developers] opportunistically encrypted mailman lists with Autocrypt

[Jan Jancar]

>> If you would like to use a Python OpenPGP implementation you could look
>> at [PGPy] and how I used it in mailman-pgp.
> 
> It's under consideration here: https://github.com/hpk42/muacrypt/issues/32
> Are your experiences with pgpy indicating it's compatible with
> enigmail and k9-mail? (see the questions on that issue)

PGPy is a quite complete OpenPGP(RFC4880) implementation, its support
table shows that:

https://pgpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/progress.html

The unsupported packets are very rarely used nowadays and are only
really produced by very old PGP clients, afaik. PGPy also has a quite
extensive test suite that works with gpg internally.

I suggest you look at PGPy issue tracker to see what it lacks currently,
the most painful issue I think is the missing support for writing
partial length packets. It can read them just well but not output them.

> 
>>> - No special interface is needed on the mailing list web page
>>>   maybe except from enabling/disabling the plugin/support. 
>>
>> Plugin configuration is done through the Mailman configuration and those
>> are read-only through the REST interface. However a plugin might supply
>> it's own REST endpoints for example for per-list setup/configuration.
> 
> I guess read-only REST would allow for a command line interface for 
> debugging or other low-level configuration wrt to autocrypt key
> status for peers.  Can a plugin add per-list configuration 
> options (enable/disable, maybe a choice between 2-3 policies?)

Yes definitely, the configuration will be handled completely inside the
pkugin. I'm thinking along the lines of:

 - Expose a custom REST endpoint for per-list Autocrypt configuration,
that can be read-write, however is only protected by one global REST
user-password pair. That will be accessed by an Autocrypt Django app,
similarly to how I implemented configuration for mailman-pgp in
[django-pgpmailman]. That app can be then run alongside Postorius and
HyperKitty which provide Mailman's configuration and archives. So this
gives list admins a simple web UI for per-list Autocrypt configuration.

 - Provide a CLI command component which can manage the per-list
Autocrypt configuration of the Mailman instance locally.

That should make per-list configuration of Autocrypt quite nice(I did
mailman-pgp per-list config exactly this way). You can also read more on
my blog, which contains my GSoC reports and goes into a bit more depth,
https://neuromancer.sk/article/18 and other GSoC articles.

> 
>>> - With the current Autocrypt specification, a mailman list 
>>>   will need to have the DMARC-mitigation "replace-from" action enabled
>>>   to a) allow the list's public key to be added to outgoing mails 
>>>   in an Autocrypt compliant way b) send properly signed and encrypted mails
>>>   to those subscribers which are Autocrypt-capable and have a "mutual"
>>>   prefer-encrypt settings (see Autocrypt spec for details "prefer-encrypt").
>>>   If we get this to work nicely i think we can see about advancing the
>>>   Autocrypt spec to support other ML modes (i.e. not replacing From).
>>>
>>> - For a mixed set of subscribers (some with and some without Autocrypt
>>>   support) mailman will send out encrypted and unencrypted mails
>>>   respectively.  The status of the group might be added to a group's
>>>   footer so that subscribers know about the group's security status
>>>   (and get incentivized to upgrade their e-mail program).
>>>
>>> Does that sound sensible? And achievable through a plugin, leaving the
>>> core (largely) untouched? 
>>
>> I definitely think so.
>>
>> [mailman-pgp]: https://gitlab.com/J08nY/mailman-pgp
>> [mailman-rest-events]: https://gitlab.com/J08nY/mailman-rest-events
>> [PGPy]: https://github.com/SecurityInnovation/PGPy
> 
> thanks a bunch for your feedback and links.
> 
> holger
> 

Glad that I could help!

[django-pgpmailman]: https://gitlab.com/J08nY/django-pgpmailman

Cheers,
-- 
Jan
______________________________________________________
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  /__\  # https://neuromancer.sk
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