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Subject: RE: [pki-tc] Candidates for OASIS PKI TC Chair


Since DKIM relies on dns, the vulnerabilities in dns will cause problems
to the keys there too, which in turn will cause legal challenges in
court if any. I remember DKIM mentions long list of the issues or
conditions still waiting to be resolved in order to make DKIM more
secure than it is. With those potential holes, I would not think it has
a strong legal binding than traditional PKI.

As for gateway level encryption in DKIM, it would be a nice add-on in
the future, but it does not solve the content security issue between the
email client to its local gateway unless email client can talk securely
with its local gateway. Then the question would be: how complicated it
would go? Will it face similar problem as PKI faces now. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Rundgren [mailto:anders.rundgren@telia.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 10:52 AM
To: Yu, Jiafu; PKI TC
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] Candidates for OASIS PKI TC Chair

Hi Jiafy,

You are right, the goals with DKIM are not the same as with S/MIME.

That DKIM does not have legal binding is though something that can
be elaborated a bit.  Legally binding signatures have two distinct
meanings.

1. As a direct replacement of wet signatures (=automation).  This is
   where DKIM and S/MIME currently differs since DKIM has no
   support in signature directives.

2. As an evidence in court.  The legal systems have shown to be very
   pragmatic, putting folks in prison based on things like unsigned mail
   and IP addresses.  DKIM, particularly in an organization context
   is likely to be as hard to repudiate as an S/MIME signature.

S/MIME encryption is probably the least working PKI application
there is, since it is in conflict with an organization's need for virus
checking on in-bound messages as well as content monitoring
on out-bound dittos.  Not to mention how hard it is to use.
But there is more: That millions of US public sector employees
have certificates does not help much as there is no easy way you
can get hold of their public keys due to privacy concerns.  I always
thought that the primary reason for having a public sector was for
serving the society at large!  Some recent, associated papers:

http://middleware.internet2.edu/pki06/proceedings/rundgren-websigning.pp
t
http://middleware.internet2.edu/pki06/proceedings/hallam-baker-email_usa
bility.ppt
http://middleware.internet2.edu/pki06/proceedings/hallam_baker-usable_em
ail.pdf

My hope is that DKIM will get an update so that even encryption
is handled at gateway level.  This should be a no-brainer AFAIK.

regards
Anders Rundgren


----- Original Message -----
From: "Yu, Jiafu" <Jiafu_Yu@stercomm.com>
To: "Anders Rundgren" <anders.rundgren@telia.com>; "PKI TC"
<pki-tc@lists.oasis-open.org>; "Arshad Noor"
<arshad.noor@strongauth.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 16:02
Subject: RE: [pki-tc] Candidates for OASIS PKI TC Chair


I would question statement like "That secure e-mail currently is being
redesigned from the ground and up (DKIM)". The goal of DKIM is to
identify who sends email mainly from smtp gateway point of view (for
supressing spamming). It does have the advantage of ease of key
distribution using dns for key lookup and retrieval, but it is only for
message origin verification, not for message content security (encrypted
like SMIME). It does not have a legal binding at this point. Secondly,
depending on how we use PKI, if we mainly use PKI without legal binding
as DKIM, PKI will be more popular than it is now. I still think PKI at
this point is still the most effective solution in certain industry or
region for its original goal(authentication, integrity, non-repudiation
etc).




-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Rundgren [mailto:anders.rundgren@telia.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 8:37 AM
To: PKI TC; Arshad Noor
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] Candidates for OASIS PKI TC Chair

>Businesses continue to search for the elusive silver bullet to
>solve their security problems - but it is my belief that until
>they start using PKI in many different aspects of their IT infra-
>structure (along with appropriate changes to applications,
>business processes and employee training), that silver bullet
>will continue to elude their grasp.

I think businesses should be cautious embracing a technology
that not even the people who claim to know PKI, know how to
apply to everyday business processes such a e-purchasing.
Until such knowledge becomes common, agreed upon, and
published[*], businesses betting on PKI are at risk being stuck
in pretty "consultant-intensive" activities.

That "secure e-mail" currently is being redesigned from the ground
and up (DKIM), is another indication that the previous generation
of PKI "theologists" did not actually foresee the Internet revolution.
The problem is that S/MIME effectively delegates security policy
enforcement down to the [nowadays often rather novice] users.
The following is how secure e-mail should have been:

    "If I send a mail via my company, it is my company that secures it"

If any of the TC chair candidates have the guts to address any of
these issues, he or she has my full support.

Anders Rundgren

*]
Go to NIST's PKI pages.  Nothing
Go to PKI-TC AGSC pages.  Nothing
Go to PKI-*.  Nothing




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