Securing Email
Jeremy Edmund Clark, Paul C. van Oorschot, Scott Ruoti, Kent E. Seamons, Daniel Zappala · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2018
While email is the most ubiquitous and interoperable form of online communication today, it was not conceived with strong security guarantees, and the ensuing security enhancements are, by contrast, lacking in both ubiquity and interoperability. This situation motivates our research. We begin by identifying a variety of stakeholders who have an interest in the current email system and in efforts to provide secure solutions. We then use differing priorities among stakeholders to help explain the evolution of fragmented secure email solutions undertaken by industry, academia, and independent developers. We also evaluate the building blocks of secure email---cryptographic primitives, key management schemes, and system designs---to identify their support for stakeholder properties. We conclude with a fresh look at the state of secure email and discuss open problems in the area.