[43649] in Cypherpunks
Re: Design proposal: crypto-capable generic interface
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)
Sun Nov 19 18:56:36 1995
To: Raph Levien <raph@c2.org>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com, s1113645@tesla.cc.uottawa.ca
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 18 Nov 1995 20:19:55 PST."
<199511190419.UAA15156@infinity.c2.org>
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 1995 15:47:48 PST
From: Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
> MIME Object Security Services. It's a technically superior alternative
> to PGP, but one with an uncertain future. It's not being actively
> developed by anyone other than TIS, and their TISMOSS prototype
> implementation is far from being generally usable.
What do you mean by "technically superior"? What technical merits
does MOSS have over PGP? It does have a better protocol with which to
integrate it into mailers, but it is only a transmission protocol, not
a security mechanism change. Worse, MOSS uses X.509, which requires a
lot of overhead for certificates.
On the other hand, the MIME-PGP protocol can provide the same
integration functionality as MOSS and still allow the use of the
simple PGP certification structure that already exists.
-derek
