PGP-MIME

[Brad Huntting <huntting@misc.glarp.com>]

> (That brings up another point.  Has anyone worked on getting armored
> PGP registered as an official MIME encoding type?  Getting pgp support
> into metamail would be a massive win --- probably better than hooks in
> Elm itself.  If no one else is working this angle, I'd be willing to
> get in touch with Nathaniel Borenstein and use whatever zorch I have
> with him to make it happen.)

I agree.  MIME is taking the Internet by storm and for PGP or PEM
to reach wide audiences, it will need to be integrated with MIME,
and be able to draw on MIME's features.

For PGP to really make use of MIME, it could use "multipart" types
to separate the objects being encrypted and/or signed from the
signatures and encrypted session keys associated with them.

This could facilitate using MIME's features for external body parts
where part of the message is stored on an anonymous ftp site or
retrievable from a mail responder.

One could encrypt a document or other file on an ftp server, then
send out PGP-MIME messages with the RSA encrypted session key to
decypt the file.  MIME handles retreving the file and PGP deals
with how to decrypt it.

MIME of course deals with ascii armor on any body part leaving PGP
free to use binary data wherever needed.

As I see it, the main problems PGP-MIME would be (1) The lack of
MIME capable readers available for PC's and MAC's (the preferred
platforms for anyone concerned about PGP security).  But more
importantly, (2) it's not obvious how to make a painless transition
from PGP-2 to PGP-MIME.

Any thoughts?


brad