Dovecot mail-crypt webmail can't read encrypted messages

[hi at zakaria.website]

On 2022-10-10 08:03, Serveria Support wrote:
> Hi, thanks, this sounds like a great idea! Will try this and let you 
> guys know...
> 
> On 2022-10-10 10:52, George Asenov wrote:
>> Dovecot is opensource so you can download source edit the log format
>> removing the passwords and compile it.
>> 
>> On 09-Oct-22 8:47 PM, Serveria Support wrote:
>>> Like I've already mentioned in my reply to Aki, I generally agree, 
>>> but many of these methods require much time and expertise some bad 
>>> guys don't have. You can also bruteforce the passwords but it can 
>>> take years. With passwords showing in logs all they need to do is 
>>> make a few clicks and enable auth logging. In most cases the attacker 
>>> is really short on time and needs to act fast, before he is detected 
>>> and locked out of the system.
>>> 
>>> On 2022-10-09 19:10, Bernardo Reino wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 9 Oct 2022, Serveria Support wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> So this means passwords cannot be masked/hidden in the logs? You 
>>>>> realize that it actually defeats the whole idea of encrypted 
>>>>> storage? It's useless. I can think of lots of scenarios: malicious 
>>>>> system administrator reading users mails and blackmailing them or 
>>>>> selling their business secrets to competitors, corrupt law 
>>>>> enforcement in some countries getting rid of political or business 
>>>>> opponents by disclosing the contents of their mails and I can go on 
>>>>> and on and on... There is no such thing as semi-privacy. Privacy is 
>>>>> either there or it's not.
>>>> 
>>>> If your attack scenario includes somebody owning your server, 
>>>> nothing
>>>> prevents them from compiling/installing a custom version of dovecot
>>>> (or any other tool you may be using, like PAM, etc.) which dumps the
>>>> passwords in clear text to a suitable file, pipe, or socket.
>>>> 
>>>> So good luck with that requirement..
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Bernardo
>>> 

Hey, I thought to recommend encrypting log file by your own.

Create service with executing bash script every second perhaps using 
while loop to encrypt dovecot logs file, add separater at end of log, so 
in following encryption cycles you can know whats being inserted new and 
needs encryption by decrypting the old and encrypting the decrypted old 
and new together.

Also, make sure to perform encryption in separate copy of logs temp file 
so to allow dovecot to pipe out logs without messing up the order of 
lines, and lastly, you probably want to disallow administrator account 
from accessing dovecot conf file perhaps by changing its permission and 
ownership, so they cant change logging path.

There you go, passwords are encrypted in log file and no one can read.

Zakaria.