S/MIME
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S/MIME (Secure / Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public key encryption and signing of e-mail encapsulated in MIME.
Contents |
History
S/MIME was originally developed by RSA Data Security Inc. The original specification used the recently developed IETF MIME specification with the de facto industry standard PCKS #7 secure message format.
Change control to S/MIME has since been vested in the IETF and the specification is now layered on Cryptographic Message Syntax, an IETF specification that is identical in most respects with PKCS #7.
Function
S/MIME provides the following cryptographic security services for electronic messaging applications: authentication, message integrity and non-repudiation of origin (using digital signatures) and privacy and data security (using encryption). S/MIME specifies the application/pkcs7-mime (smime-type "enveloped-data") type for data enveloping (encrypting): the whole (prepared) MIME entity to be enveloped is encrypted and packed into an object which subsequently is inserted into an application/pkcs7-mime MIME entity.
S/MIME functionality is built into the vast majority of modern e-mail software and interoperates between all of the following (and others):
- Outlook (since 1999? and Outlook 98)
- Outlook Express (since 1999?)
- Apple Mail (Since Mac OS X v10.3 Panther)
- Mozilla Mail (all releases after 0.9.7)
- Mozilla Thunderbird (all releases)
- Netscape Communicator (4.x)
- Lotus Notes (since release 5.0)
- Novell GroupWise (since 1998 with the 5.5 release)
- Qualcomm Eudora (since release 7.0. However 7.0 implementation of S/MIME is very deficient.)
- The Bat!
- Mutt (since release 1.5.5i)
- Gnus (with an external extension)
- Novell Evolution (since release 2.0.0)
- Balsa (since release 2.2.6)
- KMail (since release 1.6, integrated in KDE 3.2)
- Sun Java Messaging (in the Web-based client)
- GMail (using Firefox with the Gmail S/MIME extension)
See also
- MIME Multipupose Internet Mail Extensions
- TLS Transport Layer Security, formerly SSL
- E-mail authentication
- PGP Pretty Good Privacy
External links
- S/MIME working group charter — has links to S/MIME related RFCs and internet drafts.
- How to forge an S/MIME signature — critique on some S/MIME implementations.
- S/MIME IETF Working Group
- S/MIME and OpenPGP
- E-mail Client Testing for S/MIME Compliance