The encrypted email called Lavabit, once used by Snowden, has been relaunched to operate with new end-to-end email protocol.
Lavabit Relaunched
Lavabit is famous as the email service once used by leaker Edward Snowden. According to Computerworld, the developer behind Lavabit is releasing the source code for an open-source, end-to-end encrypted email standard called the Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME).
DIME promises surveillance-proof messaging. An associated mail server program and the code for this new open-source email standard will become available on Github, according to its developer, Ladar Levison.
Levison said that DIME will be flexible enough to allow users to easily manage their email and it will work across different service providers. Levison is also reviving Lavabit, to coincide with DIME's launch. According to Slash Gear, when federal agents investigating Snowden demanded access to email messages of his 410,000 in 2013, Lavabit was shut down.
In the context of growing concern over how email remains insecure, Levison has announced the relaunching of the Lavabit encrypted email service. According to Levision, this represents the next-generation of email security and privacy.
The Revived Lavabit
The revived Lavabit comes also with built-in DIME, designed to encrypt both the email and its transmission, including the metadata such as the sender, recipient and message's subject line. DIME has been started by Levison in 2014, with a Kickstarter.
The new Lavabit will come with three choices of encryption modes: trustful, cautious and paranoid. At the expense of ease of use, each of these modes of operation handles private key storage and message encryption differently. example, Lavabit's servers will never store a user's private keys if the service is set to operate in the paranoid mode.
Lavabit will only be accessible initially in trustful mode and only to existing users of the service. New users have to first pre-register and then wait for the eventual rollout of the email service.
The email service is subscription-based. On Friday, Jan. 20, Lavabit was offering a discount deal. A user can have access to 5 GB of email storage for a subscription fee of $15 annually. A user can have access to 20 GB of space for a $30 subscription fee.
