Implementation of the Email Protocol - Term Paper Example

Outline THESIS: The rise of business oriented activities online has resulted in increased used of email for business purposes. Therefore there is an urgent need to provide adequate security for data and information being exchanged across networks against possible hacking and eavesdropping from unwanted parties. Information and data integrity and identity of people transferring data should never be compromised. Privacy and confidentiality which are key ingredients to protecting the parties to an electronic message can be assured best by implementing the right email protocol. Anonymity of all the parties together with message security and integrity can be ensured by use of digital signature protocols that make it possible for delivery of electronic mail to be certified. i. Several reasons make it necessary to certify delivery of electronic mail. These include: a. To eliminate the danger of hacking, reverse engineering and eavesdropping. b. To ensure that the parties to an electronic message remain anonymous to each other for security reasons. c. To make it possible to safely transfer information from one party to another or from one sender to multiple recipients while at the same time addressing the issue of repudiation. ii. Certifying delivery of electronic mail has several advantages over conventional mail because: a. It improves efficiency of mail delivery while at the same time taking care of security concerns. b. Either of the parties to the message is barred by the protocol from ever denying having received or sent the message. iii. The protocol ensures that only the intended message is sent. E-mail Protocol Abstract The issue of security can never be overlooked in this digital age when it comes to corporate emails. A simple leakage of confidential information can create a huge social, economical and political scene that can be costly in terms of money. Therefore, the need to add value to delivery of important data over the internet to safeguard individual and corporate interests cannot be overemphasized. To guarantee delivery of email messages, it would be paramount to consider using certified mail and lay down stringent rules to govern employee conduct towards the use of conventional email. However, there are controversies that surround the use of certified mail in that it deals only with a single sender and a single recipient. So, what happens when there is the need to send an email message to more than one recipient? The answer lies in the use of a multi party certified e-mail protocol with multiple recipient capabilities. It enables the sender to realize his intention of sending similar message to multiple recipients. Any recipient who acknowledges receipt of the sender’s message is guaranteed to have received the email. To appreciate the role of email protocols best, it would suffice to not only consider how security loopholes can be sealed in the current internet infrastructure but also look at possible ways of curtailing weaknesses and optimizing on strengths of email protocol. Introduction Without email protocols, it would not be possible to maintain a consistent and orderly system for transporting, routing, handling, retrieval and storage of email messages. Email protocols provide the rules for governing such activities. There are several protocols that enable a mail server and a mail client to exchange information but this will be dealt with later on in this document. Though these protocols differ in some ways, yet they all follow similar pattern. First, one computer will normally start a conversation with another. Second, as the conversation is taking place, the server acknowledges the command using a certain code. The code informs about the success of the command or if an error occurred and finally the conversation is ended. The email protocol helps eliminate communication barriers in email systems thereby making it unnecessary to rely on proprietary protocols. This has the overall effects of making communication to be efficient by eliminating the need of gateways between e-mail systems. Needless to say, security of email message is of paramount importance and it can only be ensured by using certified e-mail protocol. Discussion Communication through email has become a permanent feature in all business entities. Email accords the ease of communication which was non existent in traditional physical mail, telephone or even facsimile. Recently, there has been this trend where most business activities are moving online. Doing business in virtual space has become a common trend. With such trends, importance of using email in communication has increased. Since business activities by nature are sensitive, it would be necessary to safeguard information being exchanged by parties concerned through the use of certified mail. Indeed, it would not be economically feasible to certify some forms of email communication. Just like physical mail, less important communication can be sent through conventional mail but sensitive communication should be sent through certified mail. The following scenario illustrates various features inherent in a secure certified mail: a. Tom (the sender) should be in a position to prove that he sent information to Daisy (the receiver) in case she tries to deny later that she ever received the email. b. Daisy should be in a position to prove that Tom never sent her any email incase he tries to claim that he did while he never sent. The idea of certified mail involves the use of some sort of signed receipt. Note that in conventional email, a recipient can receive an email, read, completely delete it and later claim that no email was ever received. Under normal circumstances, should Tom send certified mail to Daisy, it can only be released to her when she has signed the receipt. The receipt will then be sent back to Tom as a proof of delivery. In case Tom does not have the receipt in his possession, Daisy can deny having ever received the mail. In this case, the role of trusted third party is being played by the post office. The problem with this protocol is that it only certifies that Tom sent Daisy some piece of mail of which no additional information is given. This shortcoming on physical paper is overcome by using digital signature protocols. Protocols for certifying delivery of electronic mail (Blu81, EGL85) is unique in that it transfers information unwittingly (Kil90) i.e. you send a message to a recipient without certainty that he or she will receive it. This protocol uses probabilistic methods. The major drawback with this protocol is that it requires the use of fire brigade or trial and error approach. This means that extensive computations are made which involves a wide range of communication exchanges between the recipient and sender. Security for most businesses is guaranteed through the use of trusted software in certifying delivery. For instance using names from the foregoing scenario, Tom sends Daisy an email message that has been encrypted using a certified software delivery program. This software will not allow Daisy to read the contents without first acknowledging receipt by sending back to Tom a receipt. There is imminent danger of hacking and reverse engineering in the use of such protocols thus there is no guarantee that the message can reach the receiver in whole or in part. Protocols such as (BT94) require a trusted third party. This protocol requires the presence of a trusted postmaster to act as an intermediary between Tom and Daisy. Sad to say, the message cannot reach the receiver without the intermediary reading it first. In case Tom encrypts the message to shield the contents, then all that the post master can acknowledge is that Daisy received some form of illegible message which can potentially differ from the intended message. Other protocols that require the intermediary to go through the message include Mic97b, Mic97a and Mic96. Optimistic protocols are those that require an intermediary or a trusted third party. These include ASW98 AND ASW97 (Morrison, 2004, 60). These protocols are only applicable where it is impossible for any of the parties in question to follow the protocol until it is fully discharged either intentionally or due to some unavoidable circumstance. Either way, any protocol dealing with a third party should try and reduce complexity requirements and accord as little trust as possible to the intermediary. There are some protocols that disregard the issue of denial or rejection. The foregoing protocol winds up when the postmaster sends Tom a certified receipt to prove delivery and at the same time it sends Daisy a key to enable her to read what is contained in the message. In case network transmission errors hinder the delivery of the message the postmaster is discharged from liability since there is no provision to address the occurrence of such a mishap. Such protocols include the ZG96b, ZG96a and PA96 (Morrison, 2004, 76). The Email Protocol Scenario Tom wants to send Daisy a certified mail. Daisy can’t wait to receive a certified message from Tom. Apparently, we must come up with an email protocol to facilitate the transfer of the message. In other words, we must come up with an appropriate protocol that will put Tom in a position to prove to an intermediary that Daisy has indeed received his message only if she actually received it and not the other way round. This activity will begin by first assigning Tom a public key such as RSA78, EIG85. To avoid ambiguity, the key should be assigned in the form that is well known such as X.509:CCITT89. Moreover, there should be only one, PKIX, Public key infrastructure that should be used by Daisy to verify the public key. The intermediary should be in a position to verify the validity of the key during transmission by using the public key infrastructure. Moreover, the intermediary should ensure that during this time of transaction, there is a timed stamped public forum. The contents of the ongoing forum should be readily available to the public through common publications such as New York Times etc (Morrison, 2004, 79). Assuming that we have X as the message, Y as the key, F as a method of encryption that uses Y and some well known symmetric cipher i.e. (NBS77, Sch94, LMN91), we can assume that G is our message digest. From the foregoing, it follows that: a. Tom will be required to choose a key randomly i.e. Y and send an encrypted message to Daisy i.e. F(X). b. Daisy returns to Tom a message that has been digitally signed with the form: I kindly request Tom to publish the public key for the F message that has been encrypted and which ahs its digest as G [F(X)], by April 25th, 2012 at Wesley Snipes Mall Los Angeles. ____ / signed/ Daisy. c. Tom will proceed by publishing the pair G [F(X)], Y in Los Angeles on or before April 25th, 2012. d. Daisy will duly retrieve the key and proceed with decrypting the message. From the foregoing, should Tom be required to prove that Daisy received the electronic message, he will accordingly produce his copies of X, Y, F(X), and Daisy’s message that has been signed from the second step above along with necessary public record that he published in the third step above in line with Daisy’s requests. The intermediary will accordingly confirm that F(X) is indeed correct and satisfies all conditions stipulated in the third step. Moreover the intermediary confirms that that the publication was inline with the request made by Daisy in the second step. Consequently, should Daisy be required to prove that Tom never sent her any message or email, she will challenge Tom to present the aforementioned body of evidence. If he is unable or if the evidence does not satisfy requisite conditions stipulated by the protocol i.e. if the pair G [F(X)), Y published in the third step fails to match the G [F(X)] of the message that Tom alleges to have sent Daisy, the intermediary will be left with no choice but to believe in Daisy’s evidence. Analysis of the Scenario Neither Tom nor Daisy can prevail in cheating against this kind of protocol because: a. Daisy cannot receive the message or even the key for the encrypted message should she fail to comply with the second step or give uncertain date or unreasonable and or unknown location. Conversely, the same will happen incase Daisy refused the certified mail presented to him. b. Should Tom fail to comply with the third step and give false information concerning Daisy, alleging that she received the message when she actually did not, then Daisy should be in a position to show that the key was never published by Tom by referring to public records from Los Angeles. Conversely the same will apply for Tom should he fail to send the message and then claim later that he sent it. c. Failure by Daisy to comply with the fourth step means that she will incur losses because she had stated her intention to comply with that particular step in second step. Similarly, the same will happen should Daisy accept and sign the certified mail and later refuse to open it. Security Properties The aforementioned protocol has significant properties that are worth discussing. These include: i. The message signed at the second step is instrumental in explaining when and how the key is to be retrieved and the way the receiver will have the message decrypted. This will have the effect of stopping Daisy from claiming that Tom has taken long to publish the key and stop Tom from publishing the key late. ii. Daisy has the option of entrenching in her message in the second step a brief description of her expectations of the message that she wishes to decrypt. In so doing, she will have reduced Tom’s chances of delivering unwarranted message or information. In as much as neither Tom nor Daisy has ulterior motives of cheating, it would totally be unnecessary to reveal their identities to the trusted third party. This means that this protocol allows the exchange of information to be conducted anonymously using anonymous remailers (Morrison, 2004, 84). iii. There lies a loophole from where information can be leaked in that an eavesdropper can menacingly access both F(X) and Y. Thus, incase the correspondents require some privacy, it would be prudent to select a method that accords due privacy in the second and first steps. Speaking thus, certain email protocols would be suitable in such a case i.e. SH97, Sch96, PGP, S/MIME etc. iv. Tom has no choice but to keep a copy of time, Y and Daisy’s key request message for the convenience of being able to show that the transfer of message took place. Conversely, Tom must have in his possession at all times a copy of receipt of the certified mail. Implementation of the Email Protocol The email Protocol just discussed is significant in that it is compatible with the current internet infrastructure. However, it is not necessary to entrench the foregoing email protocol into secure email clients despite its relative ease of use. A commercial protocol like the Net bill protocol has a certified delivery mechanism entrenched into its structure (Morrison, 2004, 85). To improve the efficiency of the protocol just discussed, some sort of paying mechanism can be entrenched to allow Tom to make payment. Such mechanisms can be in the form of public kiosks that can help in improving anonymity and which improve security by including time stamped hashes of all of the parties (Morrison, 2004, 85). Conversely, the protocol can avoid using commercial providers and instead use public archiving systems and newsgroups such as Usenet and Deja News.com respectively (Morrison, 2004, 88). To certify delivery of information, it is worth noting that the protocol just discussed can be used in conjunction with fair exchange protocols. In case Tom has a reliable internet connection then any of the fair exchange protocols can be made into an optimistic protocol i.e. Ket95 by inculcating additional steps in between the second and third steps i.e.; i. Tom gives Daisy Y directly and ii. Daisy gives Tom a receipt for Y Thus, there would be no need for Tom to publish the receipt as required in the third step incase there is a direct exchange of receipt for Y between Daisy and Alice. This has the overall of relieving the network off traffic. However, failure of Daisy to hand over the receipt to Tom, Tom can proceed with the third step. The protocol just discussed enables optimistic variation as well as delivery of certified mail. Such protocols reduce trust and byzantine requirements especially for parties other than the sender and the receiver. Reducing trust enhances security. On the other hand, reducing undue complexities/ byzantine requirements ensures ease of delivery (Morrison, 2004, 90). Conclusion Through certified electronic mail delivery there is guarantee of delivery of messages across networks. Apart from exchanging messages between one sender and one receiver, recent developments in this field make it possible for a single sender to send an email to multiple recipients without compromising security and integrity of the message. An example of a protocol that enables a single sender to send messages to multiple recipients is the FPH protocol. As stated earlier, this protocol has certain weaknesses. For instance, users of FPH protocol do not necessarily share a specific TTP. TTP’s are different and as such the TTP selected by the sender may be something that is totally new to the receiving party. This means that a message sent in such a case can end up being cancelled by the sender at the exchange sub protocol without having actually sent the message (Morrison, 2004, 97). The advantage of the multiple recipient FPH protocol is that it can be modified to limit the use of asymmetric algorithm for public encryption. This helps further in preventing attacks against the protocols. This protocol has advanced features that prevent multiple recipients from colliding. The advantage of FPH protocol over the protocol that we have just discussed exhaustively is that there is no need to keep evidence. Also, the sender is never involved in any dispute resolutions unless the sender inadvertently failed to cancel the email sub-protocol. Needless to say, FPH protocol has better security protocols compared to the previously discussed protocol. The modified version of FPH has no known weaknesses. Works cited Morrison, James. Simultaneous electronic transactions. New York: Rutledge, 2004. Print. Read More