Optionally protect application with separate password
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Security, enhancement)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: x3webworx, Unassigned)
Details
Steps to reproduce:
This is a request for better application security, not related to master password, as this only serves to protect the account logins and this is fine for that purpose but no other purpose.
There has been many discussions on this topic but none actually ask for specific separate security features.
Currently there are no mechanisms to prevent anyone with access to any given computer where thunderbird is installed from accessing and reading emails without any special skills.
Protecting the OS with a login, any OS is fairly easily bypassed, Windows takes around 3 minutes with a live USB containing specialist software to remove or discover the password.
Most Ubuntu and similar distros are by default even password protected easy to bypass or remove/change the user password without any specialist software, either by doing single user login, or via recovery options on boot remove/change the user password.
Protecting an application that contains private and often sensitive information in emails, protecting the application itself to prevent access to its settings and preventing access and encrypting sensitive folders on user profiles that could be readable otherwise is and important privacy and security feature, that should be seriously considered.
Somewhat related and closed as wont fix just for reference.
bug 16489
bug 35308
bug 318697
bug 776063
Actual results:
Master passwords dont protect anything but the emails accounts logins. So simply cancelling the Master password prompt anyone without any skills except ability to click the cancel button or special tools can read any received/sent emails gleam accounts names, and setups.
Expected results:
If Thunderbird had a separate mechanism that could be optionally turned on or off that required a password for access or other authentication methods like onlykey which support multiple OTP/TOTP/U2F etc and upon failure to authenticate Thunderbird would be in default protected mode, then no access to settings/emails/accounts or folders in user data/profiles could be accessed.
Would then require more work and special software/skills to bypass by anyone who could bypass OS login passwords with any common and widely available information/software that requires no special skills.
I would expect that Thunderbird wouldn't even launch upon notifying user of failed auth method.
I would expect to upon navigating to any user profiles and opening thunderbird user profiles directories and opening sensitive files that would contain plaintext otherwise to be encrypted by default when this new feature would be enable, such as config files, any directories where emails are stored per account and any other database files that would contain any plaintext. to be protected.
The only drawback of this feature is when both master password and Application password be enabled, that user would likely get two separate prompts and if prompts aren't made clear confusion could ensue and possibly get the wrong passwords entered but there can be a design where one prompt can ask for two passwords:
Enter application password: [ ]
Enter master password: [ ]
Its possible to make this UX friendly and functional.
Finally I dont expect this to be accepted or worked on, since in the past similar requests have been closed and similar discussions become long and tedious and meanwhile Thunderbird doesn't protect plain user accounts and widely used unencrypted email setups.
Will be interesting to see how this progresses.
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Comment 1•4 years ago
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It seems this is the same as bug 16489 (or perhaps an extended bug 35308). Sorry, but those are wontfixed for good reasons. You need to apply file system encryption at the operating system level to get what you desire.
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Because by default nothing is encrypted, especially default email accounts. So that's 99% of everyone open the lack of any protections.
Thanks Thunderbird. Goodbye.
Description
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