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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Technology
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The email protocol, SMTP, was originally not designed with encrypting content in mind. Encryption was added years later, but as an option that is negotiated between mail servers.
While large email providers like Gmail, outlook, etc. likely all support encryption as best as they can, all it takes is one misconfigured server, etc. to cause emails to be sent in clear text at least part of the way from location to another.
It’s largely for that reason why a lot of people & organizations don’t trust email to be secure unless you use mail clients that encrypt and decrypt mail at both ends. But that’s a PITA to set up properly and manage.
If your email is sent entirely within an ecosystem like Gmail then it’s likely encrypted the entire time. But as soon as it passes outside of Gmail to another organization there’s no guarantee it’s still secure. These days it probably is, as virtually every reputable internet provider & company is going to take the issue seriously, but there’s still the history of SMTP not being encrypted that haunts those in the security fields.
SMS has the same problem though. It's only marginally safer because the tools to hijack a cellular session are a bit more complicated to use, but they are widely available and you can find plenty of instructions online on how to use maybe $3k worth of equipment to spoof a GSM base station and force a target device onto it. Hell, in some cases you don't even have to force the target device onto your rogue ENB - you can just jam the phone and hijack the number through your own SIP gateway if you get the timing right.