Re: Problem for public CAs

[Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman@xxxxxxx>]

At 04:10 PM 2/14/00 -0700, Bob Jueneman wrote:
> Instead, in the case of a signed message the From address should be viewed
> as secondary, and the certificate contents the primary information.

From a security standpoint, this is right. From a UI standpoint, it might 
not be. Assume I have a different email address in my cert than in the 
From: header of a message I send you, that your S/MIME client has informed 
you of that, and you agreed. Now you want to reply to my message. You 
probably don't want to reply to the email address in my cert, but you 
might. There are essentially two From vales: the certificate one and the 
insecure-and-possibly-altered one.

> Of course, we have to face the fact that NEITHER the DN nor the RFC822 address
> may be particularly relevant or informative.

Exactly right.

And, no, I'm not proposing a solution here.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium