Re: Decision: Encryption Method/Product

[Dave Darnell <dave_d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave_C,

The big dfference between PGP/MIME and S/MIME, at least as far as I
understand it, is that S/MIME is a completely new proposed standard with a
few alpha versions out there, while PGP/MIME just tells how we take any ole
version of PGP encryption output and wrap it up in MIME. 

PGP/MIME draft is by Mike Elkins and he has a UNIX implementation he calls
MUTT (don't ask!:-))

Download from   ftp://muddcs.cs.hmc.edu/pub/me/

Since I am not a UNIX hacker I am waiting for a Windows95/NT version.

Anyway my point is that S/MIME is indeed vapor to me since its encryption
engine has not been studied or tested thoroughly by the user community.
Sure they use RSA, but so did Netscape when they screwed up the random key
generation and allowed easy brute force cracking (fixed quickly by
Netscape).  And PGP is NOT VAPOR since it has been thoroughly tested and
used by the Internet community for years.

Zimmermann's decision to use Diffie-Hellman instead of RSA in the next
version will introduce a level of VAPOR to PGP, but everyone will have the
option to pursue that or not.  IMHO - I welcome competition to RSA.
<BEGIN-SOAPBOX> There is nothing more insidious to me than a market that has
been dominated by a virtual monopoly e.g. local TELCO's (but that is another
thread and list).<END-SOAPBOX>

Is it Friday, yet?
dave_d





At 02:43 AM 5/21/96 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
>At 2:11 PM -0700 5/20/96, Rik Drummond wrote:
>>To make that decision we need to compare the PGP/MIME and S/MIME stuff. The
>
>	the real difficulty, of course, is that if you pick either of these
>you pick vapor.  Neither has any installed base.
>
>d/
>
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