Design and Implementation of a Cryptographic Plugin for E-mail Clients
Steven Arzt · 2009
Abstract. Most applications that use cryptography implement and use only a limited set of cryptographic algorithms. In addition it is not easy to update these applications and extend their provided set of algorithms. In this paper we concentrate on e-mail clients and discuss a cryptographic plugin with focus on Mozilla Thunderbird. We provide a modular framework for exchangeable signature, hash, and encryption algorithms. We create an integration layer between e-mail applications and cipher implementations. With such a layer, both parts can be exchanged freely and independently of each other which is not possible with current solutions because they mostly rely upon a static set of ciphers and hash functions or directly integrate the ciphers into the application code.