Skip to main content

End-to-End Header Protection in Signed S/MIME

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4804))

Abstract

S/MIME has been widely used to provide the end-to-end authentication, integrity and non-repudiation. S/MIME has the significant drawback that headers are unauthentic. DKIM protects specified headers, but only between the sending server and the receiver. These lead to possible impersonation attacks and profiling of the email communication, and encourage spam and phishing activities. In this paper we propose an approach to extend S/MIME to support end-to-end integrity of email headers. This approach is fully compatible with S/MIME. Under some reasonable assumption our approach can help reduce spam efficiently.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Ramsdell, B. (ed.): S/MIME Version 3 Message Specification, IETF RFC 2633 (June 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Ramsdell, B. (ed.): Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.1, IETF RFC 3851 (July 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Q2 2006 email statistics, breaking down email behaviors and trends, EROI, Inc., Portland, Tech. Rep. (2006), [Online]. Available: www.eroi.com/eMarketingGuide/Q2-06-stats-study.pdf

  4. Resnick, P.: Internet Message Format, IETF RFC 2822 (April 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Lyon, J., Wong, M.: Sender ID: Authenticating E-Mail, IETF RFC 4406 (April 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Wong, M., Schlitt, W.: Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for Authorizing Use of Domains in E-Mail, Version 1, IETF RFC 4408 (April 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Allman, E., Callas, J., Delany, M., Libbey, M., Fenton, J., Thomas, M.: DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures, IETF RFC 4871 (May 2007) [Online] Available: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4871.txt

  8. Adida, B., Chau, D., Hohenberger, S., Rivest, R.L.: Lightweight email signatures, (February 2006), [Online] Available: http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/ rivest/AdidaChauHohenbergerRivest -LightweightEmailSignatures.pdf

  9. Email metrics program: The network operators’ perspectivereport #3 - 2nd quarter 2006, Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group(MAAWG), Tech. Rep. (November 2006), [Online] Available: http://www.maawg.org/about/FINAL_2Q2006_Metrics_Report.pdf

  10. Housley, R.: Cryptographic Message Syntax, IETF RFC 3852 (July 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of Basic Notation, ITU-T ITU-T Rec. X.680 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-1:2002 (July 2002), [Online] Available: http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com17/languages/X.680-0207.pdf

  12. Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W., Solo, D.: Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile, IETF RFC 3280 (April 2002)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Cormack, G.V., Lynam, T.R.: TREC 2005 spam track public corpora (2005), [Online] Available: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/treccorpus/

  14. Cormack, G.V., Lynam, T.R.: TREC 2006 spam track public corpora (2006), [Online] Available: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/treccorpus06/

  15. Pooka - email client in java, [Online] Available: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pooka/

  16. Javamail cryptography api., [Online] Available: http://sourceforge.net/projects/javamail-crypto/

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Robert Meersman Zahir Tari

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Liao, L., Schwenk, J. (2007). End-to-End Header Protection in Signed S/MIME. In: Meersman, R., Tari, Z. (eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2007: CoopIS, DOA, ODBASE, GADA, and IS. OTM 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4804. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76843-2_37

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76843-2_37

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-76835-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-76843-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics