RFC 1424 (rfc1424) - Page 1 of 9
Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part IV: Key Certification and Related Services
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group B. Kaliski
Request for Comments: 1424 RSA Laboratories
February 1993
Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part IV: Key Certification and Related Services
Status of this Memo
This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol for the Internet
community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.
Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol
Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Acknowledgements
This document is the product of many discussions at RSA Data
Security, at Trusted Information Systems, and on the [email protected]> mailing list. Contributors include Dave Balenson, Jim
Bidzos, Pat Cain, Vint Cerf, Pam Cochrane, Steve Dusse, Jeff Fassett,
Craig Finseth, Jim Galvin, Mike Indovina, Bob Jueneman, Steve Kent,
John Lowry, Paul McKenney, Jeff Thompson, and Charles Wu. This
document is the product of the Privacy-Enhanced Electronic Mail
Working Group.
1. Executive Summary
This document describes three types of service in support of Internet
Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM) [1-3]: key certification, certificate-
revocation list (CRL) storage, and CRL retrieval. Such services are
among those required of an RFC 1422 [2] certification authority.
Other services such as certificate revocation and certificate
retrieval are left to the certification authority to define, although
they may be based on the services described in this document.
Each service involves an electronic-mail request and an electronic-
mail reply. The request is either an RFC 1421 [1] privacy-enhanced
message or a message with a new syntax defined in this document. The
new syntax follows the general RFC 1421 syntax but has a different
process type, thereby distinguishing it from ordinary privacy-
enhanced messages. The reply is either an RFC 1421 privacy-enhanced
message, or an ordinary unstructured message.
Replies that are privacy-enhanced messages can be processed like any
other privacy-enhanced message, so that the new certificate or the
retrieved CRLs can be inserted into the requestor's database during
Kaliski