From: Raph Levien <raph@CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 95 13:27:51 PDT
To: sameer <sameer@c2.org>
Subject: Re: What is needed for S/MIME remailer ?
In-Reply-To: <199510242015.NAA20243@infinity.c2.org>
Message-ID: <199510242027.NAA14942@kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


sameer writes, among other things:

> A) limit on number of multiple concurrent procersses doing
> decryption. Remailer spams have the bad effect of spwaning hundreds of
> concurrent PGPs on the mailhost, bringing things to halt. Limiting
> number of concurrent decryptions would help this problem.

Agreed.

> B) A strong interaction with the UNIX shell, with the program
> returning a return code based on whether or not the decryption
> succeeded. (Remailers only do decryptions...) That way a remailer
> could something like:

We very much need a command line interface to S/MIME, to use in remailers
and also for other kinds of testing/hacking. I hope one is forthcoming
soon.

> 	I think the smime should be easily plugged into premail as
> well, but I don't know premail to know what would be necessary for
> that. I suspect Raph would have some input on that matter.

Raph does indeed have some input on the matter. I am currently rewriting
premail from the ground up, and am about 700 lines into it. One specific
design goal was the support of other types of encryption, including
Mixmaster and MOSS in the first release, and hopefully others as well.
Basically, I'm waiting on a command line S/MIME implementation as
described above, most hopefully as free software.

In any case, the new premail is _much_ more modular, so plugging in
experimental email stuff should be pretty straightforward.

Raph