RFC 1424 (rfc1424) - Page 1 of 9

Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part IV: Key Certification and Related Services

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