From: sameer <sameer@c2.org>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 95 13:21:00 PDT
To: baldwin@RSA.COM (RobertW.Baldwin) (baldwin)
Subject: Re: What is needed for S/MIME remailer ?
In-Reply-To: <9509248145.AA814556043@snail.rsa.com>
Message-ID: <199510242015.NAA20243@infinity.c2.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


My understanding of S/MIME isn't excellent, so I figure there are
things I could be confused about which may make this a bit wrong..

I figure a command line S/MIME program which could easily be
integrated into a remailer wouldhave the following features:

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.

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:

#!/bin/sh
if smime -f < incoming-message > /tmp/decrypted.$$
then
  # Process /tmp/decrypted
fi
rm incoming-message
rm /tmp/decrypted.$$

	The option would also be a very low-cruft-output -- there
would be none of that PGP v2.6.2 stuff that PGP sends out. Just the
decrypted output and if the message cant be decrypted, nothing gets
output. (Maybe a -q option for that..)

	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.


> 
>         The other day I was wondering what it would take to make an
> anonymous remailer for an S/MIME client.  Implementing S/MIME from
> scratch is a lot of work given the lack of a public domain
> implementation, but it seems that a remailer could be built on top
> of a commercial email product that supported S/MIME.  The question
> is: What features should a commercial S/MIME email product have to
> make it easy to support a remailer?  Are there a small set of
> command line options that would greatly simplify a remailer
> implementation?
>                 --Bob Baldwin
> 


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