Network

Security
Essentials

Fifth Edition

by William Stallings
 Chapter 8
Electronic Mail Security
“Despite the refusal of VADM Poindexter and LtCol North to
appear, the Board's access to other sources of information filled much
of this gap. The FBI provided documents taken from the files of the
National Security Advisor and relevant NSC staff members,
including messages from the PROF system between VADM
Poindexter and LtCol North. The PROF messages were
conversations by computer, written at the time events occurred and
presumed by the writers to be protected from disclosure. In this sense,
they provide a first-hand, contemporaneous account of events.”

—The Tower Commission Report to President

Reagan on the Iran-Contra Affair, 1987
Pretty Good Privacy
(PGP)
• Provides a confidentiality and authentication service that
can be used for electronic mail and file storage applications

• Developed by Phil Zimmermann

• Selected the best available cryptographic algorithms as building
blocks
• Integrated these algorithms into a general-purpose application
that is independent of operating system and processor and that
is based on a small set of easy-to-use commands
• Made the package and its documentation, including the source
code, freely available via the Internet, bulletin boards, and
commercial networks
• Entered into an agreement with a company to provide a fully
compatible, low-cost commercial version of PGP
 PGP Growth

It is available free worldwide in versions that run on a variety of platforms

The commercial version satisfies users who want a product that comes with
vendor support

It is based on algorithms that have survived extensive public review and are
considered extremely secure

It has a wide range of applicability

It was not developed by, nor is it controlled by, any governmental or standards
organization

Is now on an Internet standards track, however it still has an aura of an

antiestablishment endeavor
 Table 8.1
Summary of PGP Services
 PGP Authentication
• Combination of SHA-1 and RSA provides an effective
digital signature scheme
• Because of the strength of RSA the recipient is assured
that only the possessor of the matching private key can
generate the signature
• Because of the strength of SHA-1 the recipient is assured
that no one else could generate a new message that
matches the hash code
• As an alternative, signatures can be generated using
DSS/SHA-1
• Detached signatures are supported
• Each person’s signature is independent
and therefore applied only to the document
 PGP Confidentiality
• Provided by encrypting messages to be transmitted or to be stored locally as
files
• In both cases the symmetric encryption algorithm CAST-128 may be used
• Alternatively IDEA or 3DES may be used
• The 64-bit cipher feedback (CFB) mode is used

In PGP each symmetric key is used only once

• Although referred to as a session key, it is in reality a one-time

key
• Session key is bound to the message and transmitted with it
• To protect the key, it is encrypted with the receiver’s public key

• As an alternative to the use of RSA for key encryption, PGP uses ElGamal,
a variant of Diffie-Hellman that provides encryption/decryption
 PGP Confidentiality
and Authentication
• Both services may be used for the same message
• First a signature is generated for the plaintext message and
prepended to the message
• Then the plaintext message plus signature is encrypted using
CAST-128 (or IDEA or 3DES) and the session key is
encrypted using RSA (or ElGamal)

• When both services are used:

And finally
The sender first
Then encrypts the encrypts the
signs the message
message with a session key with
with its own private
session key the recipient’s
key
public key
 PGP Compression

• As a default, PGP compresses the message after

applying the signature but before encryption
• This has the benefit of saving space both for e-mail
transmission and for file storage
• The placement of the compression algorithm is critical
• Applying the hash function and signature after compression
would constrain all PGP implementations to the same
version of the compression algorithm
• Message encryption is applied after compression to
strengthen cryptographic security
• The compression algorithm used is ZIP
PGP E-mail Compatibility

• Many electronic mail systems only permit the use of

blocks consisting of ASCII text
• To accommodate this restriction, PGP provides the
service of converting the raw 8-bit binary stream to a
stream of printable ASCII characters
• The scheme used for this purpose is radix-64 conversion
• Each group of three octets of binary data is mapped into
four ASCII characters
• This format also appends a CRC to detect
transmission errors
Secure/Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extension (S/MIME)
• A security enhancement to the MIME Internet e-mail
format standard based on technology from RSA Data
Security

• Defined in:
• RFCs 3370, 3850, 3851, 3852
 RFC 5322
• Defines a format for text messages that are sent using
electronic mail
• Messages are viewed as having an envelope and
contents
• The envelope contains whatever information is needed to
accomplish transmission and delivery
• The contents compose the object to be delivered to the
recipient
• RFC 5322 standard applies only to the contents

• The content standard includes a set of header fields

that may be used by the mail system to create the
envelope
 Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (MIME)
MIME specification includes the following
• An extension to the RFC elements:
5322 framework that is
intended to address some Five new message header
of the problems and fields are defined, which
limitations of the use of may be included in an
RFC 5322 header; these
Simple Mail Transfer fields provide
Protocol (SMTP) information about the
body of the message
• Is intended to resolve A number of content
these problems in a formats are defined, thus
standardizing
manner that is representations that
compatible with support multimedia
existing RFC 5322 electronic mail
implementations Transfer encodings are
• The specification is defined that enable the
conversion of any content
provided in RFCs 2045 format into a form that is
through 2049 protected from alteration
by the mail system
The Five Header Fields
Defined in MIME
MIME-Version
• Must have the parameter value 1.0
• This field indicates that the message conforms to RFCs 2045 and 2046

Content-Type
• Describes the data contained in the body with sufficient detail that the receiving user agent can pick
an appropriate agent or mechanism to represent the data to the user or otherwise deal with the data in
an appropriate manner

Content-Transfer-Encoding
• Indicates the type of transformation that has been used to represent the body of the message in a way
that is acceptable for mail transport

Content-ID
• Used to identify MIME entities uniquely in multiple contexts

Content-Description
• A text description of the object with the body; this is useful when the object is not readable
Table 8.2

MIME
Content
Types
 Table 8.3
MIME Transfer Encodings
Figure 8.3 Example MIME Message Structure
 Table 8.4
Native and Canonical Form
 S/MIME Functionality
Enveloped data Signed data
• Consists of encrypted content of any type and • A digital signature is formed by taking the
encrypted content encryption keys for one or message digest of the content to be signed and
more recipients then encrypting that with the private key of the
signer
• The content plus signature are then encoded
using base64 encoding
• A signed data message can only be viewed by a
recipient with S/MIME capability

S/MIME

Clear-signed data Signed and enveloped data

• Only the digital signature is encoded using • Signed-only and encrypted-only entities may be
base64 nested, so that encrypted data may be signed
• As a result recipients without S/MIME and signed data or clear-signed data may be
capability can view the message content, encrypted
although they cannot verify the signature
Table
8.5
Cryptographic

Algorithms

Used in

S/MIME
 Table 8.6
S/MIME Content Types
Securing a MIME Entity

• S/MIME secures a MIME entity with a signature,

encryption, or both

• The MIME entity is prepared according to the normal

rules for MIME message preparation
• The MIME entity plus some security-related data, such as
algorithm identifiers and certificates, are processed by
S/MIME to produce what is known as a PKCS object
• A PKCS object is then treated as message content and
wrapped in MIME

• In all cases the message to be sent is converted to

canonical form
 Enveloped Data
• The steps for preparing an EnvelopedData MIME are:

Generate a pseudorandom session key for a particular

symmetric encryption algorithm

For each recipient, encrypt the session key with the recipient’s
public RSA key

For each recipient, prepare a block known as RecipientInfo

that contains an identifier of the recipient’s public-key
certificate, an identifier of the algorithm used to encrypt the
session key, and the encrypted session key

Encrypt the message content with the session key

 Signed Data
• The steps for preparing a SignedData MIME are:

Prepare a block
known as
Encrypt the SignerInfo
message digest that contains the
with the signer’s signer’s public-
private key key certificate,
Compute the an identifier of
message digest the message
(hash function) of digest algorithm,
the content to be an identifier of
signed the algorithm
Select a used to encrypt
message digest the message
algorithm digest, and the
(SHA or MD5) encrypted
message digest
 Clear Signing

• Achieved using the multipart content type with a

signed subtype

• This signing process does not involve transforming the

message to be signed

• Recipients with MIME capability but not S/MIME

capability are able to read the incoming message
 S/MIME Certificate
Processing
• S/MIME uses public-key certificates that conform to version
3 of X.509

• The key-management scheme used by S/MIME is in some

ways a hybrid between a strict X.509 certification hierarchy
and PGP’s web of trust

• S/MIME managers and/or users must configure each client

with a list of trusted keys and with certificate revocation lists
• The responsibility is local for maintaining the certificates needed
to verify incoming signatures and to encrypt outgoing messages

• The certificates are signed by certification authorities

 User Agent Role
• An S/MIME user has several key-management functions to
perform:
Certificate storage and
Key generation Registration
retrieval

The user of some related A user’s public key must be A user requires access to a
administrative utility must be registered with a certification local list of certificates in
capable of generating separate authority in order to receive an order to verify incoming
Diffie-Hellman and DSS key X.509 public-key certificate signatures and to encrypt
pairs and should be capable of outgoing messages
generating RSA key pairs

A user agent should generate

RSA key pairs with a length
in the range of 768 to 1024
bits and must not generate a
length of less than 512 bits
 VeriSign Certificates
• VeriSign provides a certification authority (CA) service that is
intended to be compatible with S/MIME and a variety of other
applications
• Issues X.509 certificates with the product name VeriSign Digital
ID
• At a minimum, each Digital ID contains:
• Owner’s public key
• Owner’s name or alias
• Expiration date of the Digital ID
• Serial number of the Digital ID
• Name of the certification authority that issued the Digital ID
• Digital signature of the certification authority that issued the Digital
ID
 Table 8.7
VeriSign Public-Key Certificate Classes

IA Issuing Authority
CA Certification Authority
PCA VeriSign public primary certification authority
PIN Personal Identification Number
LRAA Local Registration Authority Administrator
 Enhanced Security
Services
• Three enhanced security services have been proposed in
an Internet draft:
Signed receipt
• Returning a signed receipt provides proof of delivery to the originator of
a message and allows the originator to demonstrate to a third party that
the recipient received the message

Security labels
• A set of security information regarding the sensitivity of the content that
is protected by S/MIME encapsulation

Secure mailing lists

• An S/MIME Mail List Agent (MLA) can take a single incoming
message, perform the recipient-specific encryption for each recipient, and
forward the message
 DomainKeys
Identified Mail (DKIM)
• A specification for cryptographically signing e-mail
messages, permitting a signing domain to claim
responsibility for a message in the mail stream
• Message recipients can verify the signature by querying
the signer’s domain directly to retrieve the appropriate
public key and can thereby confirm that the message was
attested to by a party in possession of the private key for
the signing domain
• Proposed Internet Standard RFC 4871
• Has been widely adopted by a range of e-mail providers
and Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
 E-mail Threats
• RFC 4684 (Analysis of
Threats Motivating
DomainKeys Identified Mail) The most sophisticated and financially
motivated senders of messages are those who
stand to receive substantial financial benefit,
• Describes the threats being such as from an e-mail based fraud scheme
addressed by DKIM in
terms of the characteristics,
capabilities, and location of
potential attackers The next level are professional senders of
bulk spam mail and often operate as
commercial enterprises and send messages
• Characterized on three levels on behalf of third parties
of threat:

At the low end are attackers who simply

want to send e-mail that a recipient does not
want to receive
 Summary
• Pretty good privacy • S/MIME
• Notation • RFC 5322
• Operational description • Multipurpose Internet
mail extensions
• DomainKeys Identified • S/MIME functionality
Mail • S/MIME messages
• Internet mail architecture • S/MIME certification
• E-mail threats processing
• DKIM strategy • Enhanced security
• DKIM functional flow services