Design proposal: crypto-capable generic interface

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Sun Nov 19 16:09:09 PST 1995


> 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






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