ietf-smime
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Re: Proposed charter for a S/MIME working group

1997-10-01 05:43:39
Paul,

Thank you for drafting the charter.  J.G. Van Dyke & Associates concurs with
the charter.  We plan to actively participate in the IETF S/MIME WG.  We are
currently developing a reference implementation of a library of functions
that will build and process PKCS #7 v1.5 objects including the optional
security features mentioned in the charter.  We will provide source code for
the library as freeware to the Internet community.  Organizations will be
able to use the library as part of their S/MIME v3 implementations including
the optional security features.

==============================================================
John Pawling                               (301) 953-3600
J.G. Van Dyke & Associates, Inc.           (410) 880-6095
141 National Business Pkwy, Suite 210      FAX: (301) 953-2901
Annapolis Junction, MD  20701              jsp(_at_)jgvandyke(_dot_)com


At 12:36 PM 9/30/97 -0700, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
Greetings, all. As you saw last week, RSA has sent the ISOC material that
(hopefully) meets the IESG's requirements for what must happen before we
form an S/MIME working group. So, our next task is to agree on a charter
and submit it to Jeff Schiller, the area director for security. If Jeff
agrees, he'll take it to the IESG for their consideration.

Below is what I think a reasonable charter should look like. All comments
are welcome.

= = = = = = = = =

S/MIME Mail Security (smime)

Chair:
    Russ Housley <housley(_at_)spyrus(_dot_)com>

Security Area Director:
    Jeffrey Schiller <jis(_at_)mit(_dot_)edu>

Mailing Lists:
    General Discussion: ietf-smime(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
    To Subscribe:       ietf-smime-request(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
    Archive:            http://www.imc.org/ietf-smime/

Description of Working Group:

The S/MIME Working Group will define MIME encapsulation of digitally
signed and encrypted objects whose format is based on PKCS #7. X.509
Certificates and CRLs as profiled by the existing PKIX Working Group
will be used to support authentication and key management. The Working
Group will base its work on the S/MIME version 2 specification, but
the Working Group will be free to change any part of that
specification. In particular, the Working Group will prepare a new
document that allows algorithm independence, based on PKCS #7 1.5.

The S/MIME Working Group will attempt to coordinate its efforts with the
OpenPGP Working Group in areas where the work of the two groups
overlap, particularly in specification of cryptographic algorithms and
MIME structure.


Goals and Milestones:

History:
    PKCS #7 version 1.5 specification submitted as Informational RFC.
    S/MIME v2 message specification submitted as Informational RFC.
    S/MIME v2 certificate specification submitted as Informational RFC.

October 97:
    First draft of message syntax specification.
    First draft of S/MIME v3 message specification.
    First draft of S/MIME v3 certificate specification.
    First draft of S/MIME optional security extensions.

December 97:
    Last call on message syntax specification.
    Last call on S/MIME v3 message specification.
    Last call on S/MIME v3 certificate specification.

January 98:
    Last call on S/MIME optional security extensions.
    Submit  message syntax specification as a Proposed Standard.
    Submit S/MIME v3 message specification as a Proposed Standard.
    Submit S/MIME v3 certificate specification as a Proposed Standard.

February 98:
    Submit S/MIME optional security extensions as a Proposed Standard.

--Paul E. Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium