I was writing an assignment for a class on Information Security, when I came across this little gem. As soon as I read it I laughed and thought of all the times my Dad said that he never did anything to the computer, it just broke on its own.
Dad – you are great! And you make me laugh!
Hushmail, a Canadian company providing email security using PGP, has released to the US government unencrypted email communications. This respresents a violation of users’ trust in the company. I had an account with them, I will delete all my mail, and close that account. I will only trust my own computer for safe email sending/receiving. No longer will I trust the ‘security’ and ‘privacy’ of a third-party.
The DEA agents received three CDs which contained decrypted emails for the targets of the investigation that had been decrypted as part of a mutual legal assistance treaty between the United States and Canada.
The news will be embarrassing to the company, which has made much of its ability to ensure that emails are not read by the authorities.
These instructions are for QUT students. I do not know if they will work for QUT staff. Use at your own risk.
You need ‘vpnc’ program (install it with your pkg mgr). Then download off-campus.conf file and save it to /etc/vpnc/ directory. You could name it default.conf if it will be your only vpnc connection. The contents should begin with at least:
IPSec gateway sas.qut.edu.au IPSec ID qut IPSec secret qutaccess
As root run vpnc off-campus of just vpnc if you renamed it to default.conf. Enter username/password when prompted.
In Kmail, you setup IMAP connection using SSL, username/password and port 993 to host mail.qut.edu.au. SMTP uses NO ecryption, but authentication method is LOGIN (not PLAIN) and port 25 on host mail.qut.edu.au.
To exit vpnc type vpnc-disconnect as root.
I hope this helps someone.
References
http://www.its.qut.edu.au/offcampusaccess/sas/linux.jsp