From: azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 08:26:45 -0700 (PDT)
To: Raph Levien <raph@cs.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: pgp, edi, s/mime
Message-ID: <v02130501ae825f741356@[10.0.2.15]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>S/MIME has come a _long_ way. An earlier version (now called S/MIME 1.0,
>although I'm not sure this is going to make it into any marketing
>materials) had a couple of cryptographic problems compared with PGP.
>Those problems have been fixed in version 2.0, which is expected shortly
>(as an internet draft).
>
>S/MIME 2.0 _defaults_ to 168-bit triple-DES, unless you're stupid enough
>to use the export version. RSA key sizes up to 2048 bits are supported,
>as are a number of alternate symmetric algorithms. In addition, digital
>signatures are based on 160-biy SHA1, rather than 128-bit MD5, which is
>half broken anyway.
>
>In the meantime, Deming software is shipping a slick Windows
>implementation of S/MIME, which integrates nicely with Eudora. Netscape
>is expected to ship cross-platform S/MIME capability in version 4.0 of
>Navigator (their original publicity materials were only off by a factor
>of two ;-), and that will make a huge dent in the market.
>
>In sum, S/MIME leaves PGP in the dust, both techically and as a market
>force. There's still a lot of sentiment that PGP is one of "ours" and
>S/MIME is one of theirs, but at this point it's the latter that has the
>most promise of bringing encrypted e-mail to the masses.
>
>If only X.509 weren't so darned ugly :-)
>
>Raph

How will users be made confident that the S/MIME crypto isn't somehow
compromised in these products?  Vendor trust (I think not, with all the
government pressures)?




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