Waterhouse: Enabling secure e-mail with social networking

We present Waterhouse, a system for sending and receiving cryptographically protected electronic mail ("secure e-mail"). We show how an existing e-mail interface can be modified to make exchanging secure e-mail nearly effortless. Our system integrates with social networking services (such as Facebook) to automatically exchange cryptographic keys between friends. When a user sends a message to a friend, our system automatically encrypts the contents to thwart eavesdroppers. When a user receives a message from a friend, Waterhouse uses the recipient's social network to verify the sender's identity. Our prototype shows senders' photos as an intuitive indicator of message authenticity. We describe our planned user study and conclude with directions for future work.