Why Email Is Inherently Insecure
Learn how email traverses multiple servers unencrypted by default and what attackers can intercept.
SMTP Was Not Designed for Security
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol was designed in 1982 for a small, trusted academic network. Security was never a requirement: messages travel as plain text and any server along the path can read them. Decades of extensions have patched but never fully fixed this foundational weakness.
The Multi-Hop Journey of an Email
When you send an email it rarely goes directly to the recipient. It hops through multiple Mail Transfer Agents, each identified by DNS MX records. Every hop represents a server that can log, copy, or modify your message before passing it along.
All lessons in this course
- Why Email Is Inherently Insecure
- PGP and GPG Encryption for Email
- S/MIME in Enterprise Email
- End-to-End Encryption in Modern Messaging