I agree with you, I found many more applications that
do not support s/mime cf SSL-Certificates HOWTO on www.tldp.org.
However, you can sign messages in s/mime clear text,
which works the same as PGP by encapsulating the message in clear inside a
signature... but some systems will still not be able to handle properly this
mime signature...
Note that you can set your exchange server to convert
s/mime messages automatically... On my exchange 5.5 in the Internet connector
there is an option that says clients support s/mime. If it is enabled, the
s/mime message is send as it to the client, if it is not enabled then the
signature is removed (but the user does not know he has received a signed
message).
s/mime still need more work, on the implementation
level...
We are in chicken-egg situation, that will be solved
with a global PKI (my opinion)...
Cheers.
----Original Message-----
From: Cirillo CWO2 Michael R [mailto:CirilloMR@NOC.USMC.MIL]
Sent: Friday, 25 October 2002 12:27
To: 'Franck Martin '; ''Gary Lawrence Murphy' '
Cc: ''TOMSON ERIC' '; ''ietf@ietf.org' '; ''isdf@isoc.org' '
Subject: RE: [isdf] RE: Palladium (TCP/MS)
From: Cirillo CWO2 Michael R [mailto:CirilloMR@NOC.USMC.MIL]
Sent: Friday, 25 October 2002 12:27
To: 'Franck Martin '; ''Gary Lawrence Murphy' '
Cc: ''TOMSON ERIC' '; ''ietf@ietf.org' '; ''isdf@isoc.org' '
Subject: RE: [isdf] RE: Palladium (TCP/MS)
MS promises S/MIME support in their next release, which would be Dec or Mar or Jun or... Currently, Outlook Web Access doesn't "know" S/MIME, so certificate use is not possible. It is possible to read a signed email and to retrieve the attachment, but it requires Notepad or reconfig of the app to which the PKCS #7 is associated. Not hard. Encrypted emails are unreadable period.