ietf-smime
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Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-smime-ess-08.txt

1998-10-01 09:00:41
Paul,

In this updated version 8 of ESS, I have noticed that the previous work of
Jim Schaad on the "Signing Certificate Attribute Specification" has been
integrated as part of a new Section 5 on the "Signing Certificate
Attribute". The signingCertificate attribute is also listed as one of the
permitted attribute in a counterSignature attribute in Section 1.3.4 of ESS.

However, since countersignatures will be used more widely than just within
S/MIME and the signingCertificate attribute could also be used with normal
signatures, should not this new Section 5 of ESS have been integrated
within CMS instead?

In addition, is there anything done to create a new attribute that would
also be allowed in a counterSignature attribute in order to effectively
define its scope (e.g. content was or was not verified against the message
digest before generating the countersignature)?

Francois Rousseau
AEPOS Technologies
Tel: (819) 772-8522 Ext 314
Fax: (819) 772-0449
f(_dot_)rousseau(_at_)adga(_dot_)ca

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
directories.
This draft is a work item of the S/MIME Mail Security Working Group of the
IETF.

      Title           : Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME
      Author(s)       : P. Hoffman
      Filename        : draft-ietf-smime-ess-08.txt
      Pages           : 31
      Date            : 30-Sep-98
      
This document describes three optional security service extensions for
S/MIME. These services provide functionality that is similar to the Message
Security Protocol [MSP4], but are useful in many other environments,
particularly business and finance. The services are:
- signed receipts
- security labels
- secure mailing lists

The services described here are extensions to S/MIME version 3 [SMIME3],
and some of them can also be added to S/MIME version 2 [SMIME2]. The
extensions described here will not cause an S/MIME version 3 recipient to
be unable to read messages from an S/MIME version 2 sender. However, some
of the extensions will cause messages created by an S/MIME version 3 sender
to be unreadable by an S/MIME version 2 recipient.