[ih] The Internet Plan; was: Ken Olsen's impact on the Internet

[James Galvin]

Actually, PEM predates PGP.  PGP was followed by MOSS (MIME Object 
Security Services RFC 1848) within the IETF and S/MIME outside the IETF 
by RSA.  Both appeared at the same time.  This was back when the RSA 
algorithm patent still applied so MOSS never had a chance.

Later S/MIME entered the IETF standards track.  Fifteen years later it 
has evolved to include the same features and functionality of MOSS, as 
well as the certificate-based solution from PEM that it always had.

PGP and S/MIME each enjoy a small amount of success but still we don't 
have a broadly deployed secure email service.  The MOSS specification 
is historic now.

If we are going to try again I would suggest focusing on the 
infrastructure, MTA-MTA communications.  I think there could be real 
value in leveraging DNSSEC for MX and DKIM protection, but that's a 
discussion for a different home.

Jim


-- On February 16, 2011 7:34:46 AM -0500 Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> 
wrote regarding Re: [ih] The Internet Plan; was: Ken Olsen's impact on 
the Internet --

> the obvious next thing would be some kind of uniform agreement on
> strong authentication of the source of email and protecting contents.
> I know about PGP of course, but it's not uniformly implemented and I
> think we could usefully try again. Last time we tried, it was called
> PEM and suffered from too pure a hierarchy of certificates, I think.
>
> v
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:15 AM, Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:
> > On Wed, 16 Feb 2011, John Levine wrote:
> >
> >> > You mean akin to how SMTP, "Simple" mail transport protocol, was
> >> > supposed to be replaced by something better when we figured out
> >> > what email was going to be...:o)
> >>
> >> It may yet happen if we ever figure it out.
> >
> > I think it already happened with MIME. It probably needs to happen
> > again, though :-)
> >
> > Tony.
> > --
> > f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
> > HUMBER THAMES DOVER WIGHT PORTLAND: NORTH BACKING WEST OR
> > NORTHWEST, 5 TO 7, DECREASING 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 LATER IN
> > HUMBER AND THAMES. MODERATE OR ROUGH. RAIN THEN FAIR. GOOD.
> >
>