CryptoMail Newsletter

CryptoMail.org publishes the CryptoMail News-letter to provide information about secure web based email communication.

New Development

While the CryptoMail Email System has used the CBC Blowfish encryption as its symmetric cryptographic basis since the 0.90 version, by moving the CryptoMail Email System’s cryptographic algorithms from simply Blowfish to PGP, our recent developments will employ a proven industry open standard.

In the beginning of the CryptoMail Email System development, Blowfish was chosen as the cryptographic algorithm in the email message encryption scheme, because of its simple implementation and comprehension.  In the past few years, the CryptoMail Email System has evolved from a conceptual prototype to a rapidly adapted system.  To make the email system truly free for everyone and continue its growth, people in CryptoMail.org and all supporters believed that using PGP as its cryptographic base protocol would be the best development path for CryptoMail.org and the CryptoMail Email System for the foreseeable future.

A widely accepted industry standard, PGP has been used in many applications for more than a decade.  By adopting PGP as the message encryption scheme, we will open up the system’s backend to a proven technology and a widely accepted industry standard.  With our efforts, the system will not just be a "free software" project, but a system that will be packed with the industry strength in which everyone can entrust with their private and day-to-day communications.

Because the GnuPGP application is "free software" that is supported by GNU, using PGP will ensure the CryptoMail Email System to be available freely to everyone.  In conjunction to CryptoMail.org’s mission, the PGP cryptographic algorithms will ensure the email system is fully integrated with the "free software" and "open source" communities.

At the end of this development, we will strengthen our commitment to promote the freedom of private communications.  Not only will the CryptoMail Email System be free, but the system will also be running upon proven technology and industrial strength standards available to the open source community.

The move to PGP in message encryption scheme has been worked on since last year.  Our technical lead, Joshua Teitelbaum is responsible for all source code housekeeping and development, if you are interested to be our alpha and beta testers, or you just want to try the newest per-release CryptoMail Email System, please contact joshuat at cryptomail.org.

On And Off CryptoMail Service

During the past few months, near the end of 2003, many CryptoMail users might have experienced slow or no connections to our website.  Those were the result of several events that were beyond our control.

In August, the power outage in the East Coast has made our server run into overdrive.  We observed numerous usage of our service during the blackout, as people has chosen the CryptoMail Service as their main communication hub for their family and business for the day and the following week.

Afterward, the break out of many computer worm viruses caused a drastic slow down of our neighbor networks, domestically and globally, making connection between you to our site virtually impossible.  The rash of computer viruses has deleteriously affected thousands of systems, making security and privacy come to the forefront of people’s minds.

In the coming year, we are planing to investigate the problems and implement solutions to resolve slow or unreachable Internet connections due to similar events.

Users Q&A

Q: What is the difference between a password and a passphrase?

A: Password and passphrase have the same purpose for accessing your account.  A password is usually limited to a single short word, while a passphase allows you to use multiple words (via the space character) to make up a short worded phase.

The CryptoMail Service and the CryptoMail Email System allow you to use a passphrase.