Privacy-enhanced electronic mail
Matt Bishop · DIMACS series in discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science · 1991
The security of electronic mail sent through the Internet may be described in exactly three words: there is none. The Privacy and Security Research Group has recommended implementing mechanisms designed to provide security enhancements. The first set of mechanisms provides a protocol to provide privacy, integrity, and authentication for electronic mail; the second provides a certificate-based key management infrastructure to support key distribution throughout the internet, to support the first set of mechanisms. This paper describes these mechanisms, as well as the reasons behind their selection and how these mechanisms can be used to provide some measure of security in the exchange of electronic mail. Index Terms: certificates, cryptography, electronic mail, internet, privacy, security 1. Introduction Probably the best-known use of computer networks is for the transmission of electronic mail. Much less widely known is the inherent lack of security in most mailing systems. Recently ...