E-mail encryption
Encyclopedia
Email encryption refers to encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...

, and often authentication
Authentication
Authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or entity...

, of email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

 messages, which can be done in order to protect the content from being read by unintended recipients.

Technology for email is readily available (see below), but has not achieved widespread adoption, apparently due to social factors, such as people seeing the use of encryption as paranoid, and as marking a message urgent whether it is or not (Gaw et al, 2006).

Email encryption can rely on public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private...

, in which users can each publish a public key that others can use to encrypt messages to them; while keeping secret a private
Public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private...

 key they can use to decrypt such messages or to digitally encrypt and sign messages they send.

encryption protocols

Popular protocol
Communications protocol
A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...

s for email encryption include:
  • PGP
    Pretty Good Privacy
    Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...

  • S/MIME
    S/MIME
    S/MIME is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly RFCs. S/MIME was originally developed by RSA Data Security Inc...

  • TLS
    Transport Layer Security
    Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet...

  • Identity based encryption
  • Mail sessions encryption

Mail sessions encryption

The STARTTLS
STARTTLS
STARTTLS is an extension to plain text communication protocols, which offers a way to upgrade a plain text connection to an encrypted connection instead of using a separate port for encrypted communication....

 SMTP extension is a TLS (SSL)
Transport Layer Security
Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet...

 layer on top of the SMTP connection. While it protects traffic from being sniffed
Packet sniffer
A packet analyzer is a computer program or a piece of computer hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network or part of a network...

 during transmission, it is technically not encryption of emails because the content of messages is revealed to, and can be tampered with, by involved email relays. In other words, the encryption takes place between individual SMTP relays, not between the sender and the recipient. When both relays support STARTTLS, it may be used regardless of whether the email's contents are encrypted using another protocol.

STARTTLS is also an extension of IMAP4
Internet Message Access Protocol
Internet message access protocol is one of the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval, the other being the Post Office Protocol...

 and POP3
Post Office Protocol
In computing, the Post Office Protocol is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern...

, see RFC 4616.

See also

  • Email authentication
  • Email privacy
  • Secure Messaging
    Secure messaging
    Secure messaging is a server based approach to protect sensitive data when sent beyond the corporate borders and provides compliance with industry regulations such as HIPAA, GLBA and SOX...

  • Crypto heaven
    Crypto heaven
    The term crypto heaven refers to the use of cryptography in an e-mail and data hosting in order to obscure the content to all but the sender and the recipient....

  • Enigmail
    Enigmail
    Enigmail is an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite, SeaMonkey internet suite and Mozilla Thunderbird that provides public key e-mail encryption and signing. Enigmail works under Microsoft Windows, Unix-like, and Mac OS operating systems...

     - Thunderbird plug-in
  • GPGMail
    GPGMail
    GPGMail is an extension for Apple Mail that provides public key e-mail encryption and signing. GPGMail works under Mac OS and the actual cryptographic functionality is handled by GNU Privacy Guard....

     - OS X Mail.app plug-in
  • encryptics - Email client and Outlook plug-in
  • Zix Corporation
  • Entrust
    Entrust
    Entrust Inc. is a $100 million privately-owned software company with 350 employees. It provides identity-based security software and services in the areas of public key infrastructure , multifactor authentication, Secure Socket Layer certificates, fraud detection, digital certificates and mobile...

  • Echoworx
    Echoworx
    Echoworx, founded in 2000, is based in Toronto, Canada with offices in Atlanta and London. Provides email encryption and data encryption with all data encrypted using industry trusted standard PKI and S/MIME technologies for strong encryption and digital signatures, relying on standard X.509...

  • Protected Trust - Outlook plug-in
  • www.enlocked.com - Enlocked is integrated into browser or other mail client
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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