Re: Yahoo!'s DomainKeys and Cisco's IIM have merged

["william(at)elan.net" <william@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Andrew Newton wrote:

> > How do the proponents of the META Signatures proposal feel on this
> > announcement ?
> >
> > William ?
>
>
> Since my name was on the To: line and I have in the past stated favor for 
> S/MIME based proposals, I'll give my opinion:
>
> As with all of William's work, META Signatures is good stuff.  However, in 
> the intervening months I've talked to several vendors who have implemented 
> DomainKeys and not a single one ever said "This would have been easier if it 
> were based on S/MIME".  Given this plus the apprehension some people have 
> regarding S/MIME's interaction with current MUAs, I now think the DK/IIM 
> approach is the path we should follow.

You're mixing up my original MTA Signatures (S/MIME in special trace mime 
segment to hide from MUAs) presented year ago with META Signatures
(header-only field signature with options to sign each mime part separately
by means of separately added digest header fields).

I seriously doubt any vendor would find implementing META Signatures harder
then DK or IIM. Its different, more comprehensive syntax that combines 
features of both, but the cryptography and hard parts are all the same 
and somebody who has implemented one could change to the other reusing 
existing code with aditional maybe 10 - 25% development time.

---
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william@xxxxxxxx