[liberationtech] Lavabit stored user passwords in plaintext?

[Tom Ritter]

On 14 August 2013 18:29, Bernard Tyers <b at runningwithbulls.com> wrote:
> I came across this article outlining historical operation of Lavabit's services.
>
> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/8/13/in-memoriam-lavabit-architecture-creating-a-scalable-email-s.html
>
> It mentions in two separate places that they stored users passwords in plaintext to allow key generation and encryption to take place.

No, it said in two places it SAW the plaintext password of the user.
Not that they stored it.

My takeaway from his explanation was they got the plaintext password
from the user, and compared it with their stored hash.  If it matched,
the user was authenticated.  Then they used the plaintext password* to
decrypt the asymmetric private key, which they then could use to
unlock the user's mail.  After they decrypted the private key, they
threw away the plaintext password, zeroing from memory.  After the
user ended their session (IMAP/POP/whatever) they discarded the
decrypted private key, and zeroed the memory.

No plaintext passwords stored, only seen when the user sent it.

-tom

* actually, most likely, a key-stretched version