Re: SFL and Balsa

[wil <wil dready org>]

The patch uses OpenSSL and basically duplicates the already existing PGP 
features in mutt. However, the libmutt in Balsa is terribly out-of-sync 
with mutt, and does not seem to have PGP support.

http://elmy.myip.org/mutt/smime.html

What you talked about is something to do with mailcap and gnome's MIME 
handling, which I am not familiar with. But I know that the content-type's 
for PGP and S/MIME are distinct so you have no problem identifying them. 
e.g. SMIME goes like application/x-pcks7-signature etc. Algorithm used is 
specified within the signature itself.

I doubt this patch would be useful here. For one, it spawns the openssl's 
smime tool to do all its functions. Ideally it should be a linked in 
library.
But I still prefer OpenSSL to SFL, haven't seen Swordfish.


| wil                   |
| http://www.dready.org


On 15 Oct 22:41 Timothy Ang wrote:
>  CDSA or Common Data Security Architecture spearheaded by Intel,
>  attempts to set an vendor and technology independent open-source
>  common security standards for applications.
>  More can be found at http://developer.intel.com/ial/security/index.htm
>   I heard that a lot of companies are using CDSA as a middleware to
>  implement their security layers in their applications.
>   Unfortunately, one has to implement the functions in their Messaging 
>API
>  extensions, which makes a huge drawback in using CDSA in email clients.
>  In actual fact, SFL, developed by RSA, is not that popular in Linux.
>  It is mainly used in Windows. I guess RSA's reputation was tarnished by
>  Hugh
>  Jackman
>  in the movie Swordfish...
>   You mentioned there's a SMIME patch for mutt. But I have noticed that
>  Balsa
>  uses
>  Gnome to recognise the attached file's mime-type. Thus unless one
>  registers
>  the file
>  extensions in a system file, Gnome is going to "stereotype" the file as
>  "application/octet-stream".
>  Is it possible to "plug" it into Balsa, especially in labelling what
>  protocol or encoding algorithm
>  in encryption in the mail headers? How useful will it be to use this
>  patch
>  alongside with SFL?
>   Best Regards,
>  Tim
>   ----- Original Message -----
>  From: "wil" <wil@dready.org>
>  To: "Brian Stafford" <brian@stafford.uklinux.net>
>  Cc: "Timothy Ang" <leonhong2001@yahoo.com>; <balsa-list@gnome.org>
>  Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 7:41 PM
>  Subject: Re: SFL and Balsa
>    > Timothy: What's CDSA?
>  >
>  > >
>  > >Anyway the point is having S/MIME does not preclude the use of
>  PGP/MIME.
>  > >
>  >
>  > But they are completely different and not-interoperable. It'd be great
>  if
>  > Balsa could support both, but that's not an easy job. See below.
>  >
>  > >>  > Another thing is, it is fairly difficult to both support S/MIME
>  and
>  > >>PGP at
>  > >>  > the same time (I don't even know of any commercial mailer that
>  can
>  > >>do it).
>  > >>  > GPG Made Easy is an API that is supposed to be generic but it
>  looks
>  > >>pretty
>  > >>  > young a project.
>  > >
>  > >Wrong.  Read up on multipart/encrypted (RFC 1847).  Any number of
>  > >mechanisms
>  > >can coexist in this framework.
>  > >
>  >
>  > I'm referring to the implementation i.e. support both in a consistent
>  > interface in Balsa. Conceptually the operations are mostly similar,
>  sign
>  > with private key, encrypt with public key, verify with public key,
>  decrypt
>  > with privkey etc. I've seen the SMIME patch for mutt, it uses lots of
>  > #ifdef's mainly because mutt was hardwired for PGP. It would be 
>painful
>  to
>  > do that in Balsa. But is it worth defining an abstraction for just two
>  > standards?
>  >
>  >
>  > | wil                   |
>  > | http://www.dready.org
>  >
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