Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:31:44 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Michael Class <michael_class@hp.com> Cc: "Scot W. Hetzel" <hetzels@westbend.net>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Digitally Signed Messages (Re: HEADS UP: CAM cutover in two weeks.) Message-ID: <19980416193144.U1090@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <3535A5EB.E6B6E281@hp.com>; from Michael Class on Thu, Apr 16, 1998 at 08:32:11AM %2B0200 References: <05cb01bd6899$6e0135e0$c3e0d9cf@admin.westbend.net> <19980416133939.F1090@freebie.lemis.com> <3535A5EB.E6B6E281@hp.com>
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(moved to -chat) On Thu, 16 April 1998 at 8:32:11 +0200, Michael Class wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >> >> On Wed, 15 April 1998 at 13:08:01 -0500, Scot W. Hetzel wrote: >>> Could you please not send Digitally Signed Messages to the list. For those >>> of us that have mail programs that support it, it is kind of annoying to >>> have to go through 2 displays to just to read the message. >> >> Can somebody give me more information on digital signatures? What >> software supports it? Where can I find the standards definition? > > I think I caused the discussion :-( Iam sorry, I just have the digitial > signing (with X.509 Certificates, done by Netscape Communicator-Mailer) > switched on as default, and forgot to switch it of for the message to > this list. I apologize! No need to apologize. I was just interested. > The reason why I have switched it on by default is that I want to get > people in discussions about digital signing, so that more and more > people will understand how that works in the future. > > Btw: A digital signed message is just a MIME-Message with an attachment > that has the Hash digital encrypted. Do you think that it is evil to use > MIME-Messages on a mailinglist these days? Good question. Personally, I don't, but a lot of people apparently still do. MIME is the way to go, and it's rather shaming that Microsoft does some of it better than we do. Unfortunately, though, people tend to stick with their mailers, and a lot don't handle MIME, or not well. It took me a long time to find a replacement for elm, for example. Your previous point: digital signatures. mutt does this too, though not according to X.509. In general, I have difficulty understanding why anybody should want to send a digitally signed message to people who don't have the ability to check the authenticity of the signature. That applies to a lot of the messages I see on the mutt mailing list, and it makes me wonder whether people are just sending them for the fun of it. On the other hand, I must confess that I did so myself for a few days before I realised how little sense it makes. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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