Lavabit

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lavabit

Lavabit.png
logo
Webmail provider
Basic data

developer Ladar Levison
Publishing year 2004
category Webmail
lavabit.com

Lavabit is a webmail service provider and a US company that provides encrypted email services. The service was founded and operated in 2004 by Ladar Levison . From August 8, 2013 to January 20, 2017, Levison temporarily shut down Lavabit in connection with the Snowden affair .

Lavabit was founded by Texas programmers as an answer to the Gmail service because of privacy concerns . The site offered its users the opportunity to encrypt their emails asymmetrically to a high degree . The service was described by the weblog Ghacks as "the most secure, private e-mail service currently available". In July 2013 Lavabit had 350,000 users and offered free and paid accounts, the possible storage space per user was between 128 megabytes and 8 gigabytes.

Lavabit was featured in the media when it became known that whistleblower Edward Snowden was using the service to communicate with Human Rights Watch lawyers and activists while he was at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow .

On the day of swearing in of Donald Trump for US president the owner Ladar Levison announced that the service would continue again and all former users could continue to use their email account E. He also explained that the service now uses the Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME) architecture (not to be confused with the now outdated DIME message format from Microsoft ), which not only enables the content of an email to be encrypted, but also to obfuscate it Metadata . Furthermore, end-to-end encryption should also follow in the course of 2017 .

Claims from US authorities

On August 8, 2013 Lavabit was closed and the page was replaced by a message in which the operator regrets not being able to explain his reasons for discontinuing the service. He raised funds to fight for his constitutional rights at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - a federal appeals court. After Edward Snowden, who started the surveillance and espionage affair in 2013 , used the service to give an interview during his stay in the transit area of ​​Moscow Airport, the FBI obtained a search warrant and surrendered all SSL keys , thereby allowing access to all of them communication via Lavabit would have been possible. The company initially issued all of the keys as miniature printouts (font size 4pt ), but the court then ordered them to be delivered in a usable form. Violation was punished with a fine of $ 5,000 per day. Lavabit then ceased operations.

At the same time, Levison warned against entrusting personal information to any company with a physical presence in the United States . He also initiated legal action to fight for Lavabit to reopen. The service had assured its users that emails would be stored in encrypted form on its servers and that they would only have access to user data via their password . With the closure of Lavabit, an important international provider of secure e-mail inboxes will disappear.

In March 2016, the US government inadvertently published corresponding court documents in unredacted form that the US government's massive crackdown on Lavabit in 2013 was based on the US government encrypting access to Edward Snowden's Wanted to force email communication.

Willingness to cooperate with the FBI

Lavabit's court records revealed that Ladar Levison was not fundamentally opposed to cooperation with the FBI. For a payment of US $ 2,000, he wanted to write a program for reading out data and for a further US $ 1,500 to transfer this to the FBI over the next three months in order not to receive a National Security Letter .

In the end, however, Ladar Levison's concession did not go far enough for the FBI, as they demanded that metadata , passwords, e-mail content and SSL keys be disclosed in real time without a judicial order. By “real time” the FBI meant direct network access to Lavabit in order to be able to access all data without Levison's intervention.

interview

On August 13, 2013, Levison first spoke publicly about what happened to him on the non-commercial broadcaster Democracy Now .

Limited access to mail archives for Lavabit customers in October 2013

From October 15 to 17, 2013, Lavabit users had the announced limited opportunity to change their old user password. From Friday, October 18th, this new password could be used to access Lavabit's own mail archive for a period of a few days in order to download and save it. For this purpose, a website with a new SSL certificate was published, which enabled the new password to be set up securely and then the data to be downloaded securely. This page is currently no longer available.

Alternatives to Lavabit

According to Levison's warning, there are now numerous encrypted e-mail services whose servers are located outside the USA and are therefore not exposed to direct pressure from US authorities.

Instead of a secure e-mail provider, e-mail encryption with software and anonymous e-mail services such as disposable addresses are alternatives.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lavabit.com Site Info ( English ) Alexa Internet . Retrieved August 8, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b Spencer Ackerman: Email service lavabit abruptly shut down citing government interference Founder of service reportedly used by Edward Snowden Said he would not be complicit in 'crimes against the American people' (English) . In: theguardian.com , The Guardian , August 8, 2013. Retrieved August 8, 2013. "" I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit, "founder Ladar Levison wrote on the company's website" 
  3. ↑ Geoffrey Ingersoll: How Edward Snowden Sends His Ultra-Sensitive Emails (English) . In: Business Insider , July 12, 2013. Archived from the original on July 15, 2013. Retrieved August 8, 2013. 
  4. ↑ Martin Brinkmann: lavabit is probably the most secure and private email service right now (English) . In: Ghacks , July 14, 2013. Archived from the original on January 25, 2014. Retrieved August 8, 2013. 
  5. ^ Poulsen, Kevin : Edward Snowden's Email Provider Shuts Down After Secret Court Battle ( English ) In: Wired . August 8, 2013. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014. Retrieved on August 8, 2013.
  6. ↑ Werner Pluta: Encrypted e-mail service Lavabit is coming back. In: Golem.de. January 21, 2017. Retrieved January 21, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Bert Ungerer: Protected email: Lavabit reports back. In: Heise Online. January 21, 2017. Retrieved January 21, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Xeni Jardin: Lavabit, email service Snowden reportedly used, abruptly shuts down (en) . In: Boing Boing , August 8, 2013. Archived from the original on March 30, 2014. 
  9. ↑ a b Georg Wieselsberger: NSA surveillance scandal - Snowden provider only issued SSL keys as a printout in miniature. GameStar .de, October 4, 2013, accessed October 4, 2013 .
  10. ↑ Kevin Poulsen: Edward Snowden's E-Mail Provider Defied FBI Demands to Turn Over Crypto Keys, Documents Show. Wired , October 2, 2013, accessed October 4, 2013 .
  11. ↑ Email provider Lavabit is closing due to Snowden. Tages-Anzeiger, August 9, 2013, accessed August 9, 2013 .
  12. ↑ Pressure from the US authorities: E-mail service with Snowden connection closes under protest . Mirror online
  13. ↑ www.democracynow.org cited: I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.
  14. ↑ Martin Holland: Forget Blackening - Edward Snowden revealed as the target of the attack on Lavabit. heise.de, March 18, 2016, accessed on March 19, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Alex Hern: Lavabit founder offered to log users' metadata if FBI paid him $ 3,500 . The Guardian, Oct. 9, 2013
  16. ↑ Friedhelm Greis: Snowden's mail provider: Lavabit founder offered the FBI metadata for $ 3,500 . Golem.de, October 10, 2013
  17. ↑ Ferdinand Thommes: Lavabit founder sought to trade with the FBI . ComputerBase, October 12, 2013
  18. ↑ EXCLUSIVE: Owner of Snowden's Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov't , Democracy Now !, August 13, 2013
  19. ↑ NSA scandal: Lavabit founder gives interview on the verge of legality , Zeit Online, August 14, 2013
  20. ↑ Lavabit press release: Lavabit to Briefly Reinstate Services for Data Recovery ( Memento of October 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) , PR Newswire, October 14, 2013
  21. ↑ Crypto e-mail service: Lavabit customers can save messages believed to be lost ( memento from February 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) , SPIEGEL Online, October 15, 2013, archived from the original on October 16, 2013
  22. ↑ this version ( Memento of November 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  23. ↑ Encrypted email service once used by Edward Snowden to relaunch . The Intercept January 20, 2017; Retrieved April 20, 2017
  24. ↑ Markus Kasanmascheff: E-Mails and privacy: How to protect yourself from snoopers. Softonic, August 6, 2013, accessed August 9, 2013 .