The Internet and email is old at this point.
It can be reasonably argued that email links are a significant threat vector right now.
So far, we just keep trying to sandbox links or scan attachments, but it's still not stopping the threat.
My questions for comment:
- Would removing anonymity from email reduce or remove this threat? If business blocked all uncertified email senders, would this threat be gone?
- Why can't we do PKI well after a few decades?
- Does anyone believe PKI could apply to individuals? In the context of identity for email, accounts, etc?
I see services like id.me and others and wonder why we can't get digital identity right and if we could, would it eliminate some of the major threats?
Image credit: https://www.office1.com/blog/topic/email
Edit, post not related to the site or any service, just image credit.
Would removing anonymity from email reduce or remove this threat? If business blocked all uncertified email senders, would this threat be gone?
So as a goober that keeps getting jobs where my employer mandates that I am assigned an email address from their private email system, is told to "practice cyber security awareness" blah blah blah, and then is immediately spammed by internal emails with a shit ton of links (from people who are strangers to me but actually work for the same employer) from inside the org, I don't think removing anonymity would eliminate the threat. I'm being habituated into opening, reading, and encouraged to click links from "strangers" by my employer.
It might make it easier to for an attacker to ID a target though.
There are many ways to be more selective about from whom to accept email. SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and various blacklists are among them. They are supposed to make life harder for spammers. But they have also made running a mail server something that few dare to try anymore. Setup is not easy, but getting blacklisted is, and it causes silent delivery failure, and takes days of work to fix.
As a result, most of the email is run by Microsoft and Google. But that didn't stop phishers. They just go after people at smaller companies where security isn't as tight yet, and then they've got valid Microsoft accounts to send from. Liars and Outliers by Schneier is about this sort of dynamic.
As for PKI: If I may assume you to be, or have been, affiliated with an armed service -- Whose property is your CAC? And why did you use a pseudonym to make this post? (I mean to be pithy, not sarcastic.) I think Liars and Outliers by Schneier is all about this sort of thing - but I didn't get much of it read before it was due back at the library.
Yeah, my frustration with how we've centralized email on those enterprises is that criminals and spammers can just get accounts, pay marketing fees, malware ads, etc.
Even PKI is frustrating in that it's both a racket where only a couple can do it for good reasons, they can almost charge whatever they want, and still there's places where you can get certs minted with almost no validation.
I initially hated token login, but after you realize you never need passwords, to remember accounts, and it works for signing documents.
I'm not says you shouldn't still have a private selection, but I wish we had a certified solution that could reduce deception. Or at least I would direct all non certified senders to spam.
