What Are Some Good Projects For Novices?

[Michael Ströder]

phil hunt wrote:
> 
> On 19 Aug 2001 00:34:15 -0700, Paul Rubin <phr-n2001 at nightsong.com> wrote:
> >philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
> >> Ones you find interesting.
> >>
> >> For example, if you are interested in email encryption, you might
> >> want to have a look at my herprip program,
> >> <http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/herbrip.html>.
> >
> >Is there some reason you've defined your own protocol instead of just
> >using S/MIME or OpenPGP?
> 
> My understanding of OpenPGP is that it doesn't provide for automatic
> transmission of public keys

Hmm, note that verifying the authenticity of public keys prior of
using them for encryption or signature verification is an essential
part of using public-key cryptography.

> my goal is to make encryption totally effort-free for the user

IMHO not doable.

> Nor does it encrypt header fields such as the Subject: line,

Also a deficiency of S/MIME.

> nor does it make secret the fact that an emauil contains a MIME
> attachment (both of which could help an adversary, e.g. with
> traffic analysis).

AFAIK can be hidden when encrypting with S/MIME.

> I haven't looked into S/MIME. Is there a web page with a good usmmary of
> it?

http://www.rsasecurity.com/standards/smime/
http://www.imc.org/ietf-smime/index.html

Ciao, Michael.