Section 15.2. SMIME
15.2. S/MIMES/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) is a security enhancement to the MIME Internet e-mail format standard, based on technology from RSA Data Security. Although both PGP and S/MIME are on an IETF standards track, it appears likely that S/MIME will emerge as the industry standard for commercial and organizational use, while PGP will remain the choice for personal e-mail security for many users. S/MIME is defined in a number of documents, most importantly RFCs 3369, 3370, 3850 and 3851. To understand S/MIME, we need first to have a general understanding of the underlying e-mail format that it uses, namely MIME. But to understand the significance of MIME, we need to go back to the traditional e-mail format standard, RFC 822, which is still in common use. Accordingly, this section first provides an introduction to these two earlier standards and then moves on to a discussion of S/MIME. RFC 822RFC 822 defines a format for text messages that are sent using electronic mail. It has been the standard for Internet-based text mail message and remains in common use. In the RFC 822 context, messages are viewed as having an envelope and contents. The envelope contains whatever information is needed to accomplish transmission and delivery. The contents compose the object to be delivered to the recipient. The RFC 822 standard applies only to the contents. However, the content standard includes a set of header fields that may be used by the mail system to create the envelope, and the standard is intended to facilitate the acquisition of such information by programs. The overall structure of a message that conforms to RFC 822 is very simple. A message consists of some number of header lines (the header) followed by unrestricted text (the body). The header is separated from the body by a blank line. Put differently, a message is ASCII text, and all lines up to the first blank line are assumed to be header lines used by the user agent part of the mail system. A header line usually consists of a keyword, followed by a colon, followed by the keyword's arguments; the format allows a long line to be broken up into several lines. The most frequently used keywords are From, To, Subject, and Date. Here is an example message: Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1998 10:37:17 (EST) From: "William Stallings" <ws@shore.net> Subject: The Syntax in RFC 822 To: Smith@Other-host.com Cc: Jones@Yet-Another-Host.com Hello. This section begins the actual message body, which is delimited from the message heading by a blank line. Another field that is commonly found in RFC 822 headers is Message-ID. This field contains a unique identifier associated with this message. Multipurpose Internet Mail ExtensionsMIME is an extension to the RFC 822 framework that is intended to address some of the problems and limitations of the use of SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) or some other mail transfer protocol and RFC 822 for electronic mail. [RODR02] lists the following limitations of the SMTP/822 scheme:
MIME is intended to resolve these problems in a manner that is compatible with existing RFC 822 implementations. The specification is provided in RFCs 2045 through 2049. OverviewThe MIME specification includes the following elements:
In this subsection, we introduce the five message header fields. The next two subsections deal with content formats and transfer encodings. The five header fields defined in MIME are as follows:
Any or all of these fields may appear in a normal RFC 822 header. A compliant implementation must support the MIME-Version, Content-Type, and Content-Transfer-Encoding fields; the Content-ID and Content-Description fields are optional and may be ignored by the recipient implementation. MIME Content TypesThe bulk of the MIME specification is concerned with the definition of a variety of content types. This reflects the need to provide standardized ways of dealing with a wide variety of information representations in a multimedia environment. Table 15.3 lists the content types specified in RFC 2046. There are seven different major types of content and a total of 15 subtypes. In general, a content type declares the general type of data, and the subtype specifies a particular format for that type of data.
For the text type of body, no special software is required to get the full meaning of the text, aside from support of the indicated character set. The primary subtype is plain text, which is simply a string of ASCII characters or ISO 8859 characters. The enriched subtype allows greater formatting flexibility. The multipart type indicates that the body contains multiple, independent parts. The Content-Type header field includes a parameter, called boundary, that defines the delimiter between body parts. This boundary should not appear in any parts of the message. Each boundary starts on a new line and consists of two hyphens followed by the boundary value. The final boundary, which indicates the end of the last part, also has a suffix of two hyphens. Within each part, there may be an optional ordinary MIME header. Here is a simple example of a multipart message, containing two parts both consisting of simple text (taken from RFC 2046): From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@bellcore.com> To: Ned Freed <ned@innosoft.com> Subject: Sample message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="simple boundary" This is the preamble. It is to be ignored, though it is a handy place for mail composers to include an explanatory note to non-MIME conformant readers. simple boundary This is implicitly typed plain ASCII text. It does NOT end with a linebreak. simple boundary Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii This is explicitly typed plain ASCII text. It DOES end with a linebreak. simple boundary This is the epilogue. It is also to be ignored. There are four subtypes of the multipart type, all of which have the same overall syntax. The multipart/mixed subtype is used when there are multiple independent body parts that need to be bundled in a particular order. For the multipart/parallel subtype, the order of the parts is not significant. If the recipient's system is appropriate, the multiple parts can be presented in parallel. For example, a picture or text part could be accompanied by a voice commentary that is played while the picture or text is displayed. For the multipart/alternative subtype, the various parts are different representations of the same information. The following is an example: From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@bellcore.com> To: Ned Freed <ned@innosoft.com> Subject: Formatted text mail MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=boundary42 --boundary42 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ... plain text version of message goes here.... --boundary42 Content-Type: text/enriched .... RFC 1896 text/enriched version of same message goes here ... boundary42 In this subtype, the body parts are ordered in terms of increasing preference. For this example, if the recipient system is capable of displaying the message in the text/enriched format, this is done; otherwise, the plain text format is used. The multipart/digest subtype is used when each of the body parts is interpreted as an RFC 822 message with headers. This subtype enables the construction of a message whose parts are individual messages. For example, the moderator of a group might collect e-mail messages from participants, bundle these messages, and send them out in one encapsulating MIME message. The message type provides a number of important capabilities in MIME. The message/rfc822 subtype indicates that the body is an entire message, including header and body. Despite the name of this subtype, the encapsulated message may be not only a simple RFC 822 message, but also any MIME message. The message/partial subtype enables fragmentation of a large message into a number of parts, which must be reassembled at the destination. For this subtype, three parameters are specified in the Content-Type: Message/Partial field: an id common to all fragments of the same message, a sequence number unique to each fragment, and the total number of fragments. The message/external-body subtype indicates that the actual data to be conveyed in this message are not contained in the body. Instead, the body contains the information needed to access the data. As with the other message types, the message/external-body subtype has an outer header and an encapsulated message with its own header. The only necessary field in the outer header is the Content-Type field, which identifies this as a message/external-body subtype. The inner header is the message header for the encapsulated message. The Content-Type field in the outer header must include an access-type parameter, which indicates the method of access, such as FTP (file transfer protocol). The application type refers to other kinds of data, typically either uninterpreted binary data or information to be processed by a mail-based application. MIME Transfer EncodingsThe other major component of the MIME specification, in addition to content type specification, is a definition of transfer encodings for message bodies. The objective is to provide reliable delivery across the largest range of environments. The MIME standard defines two methods of encoding data. The Content-Transfer-Encoding field can actually take on six values, as listed in Table 15.4. However, three of these values (7bit, 8bit, and binary) indicate that no encoding has been done but provide some information about the nature of the data. For SMTP transfer, it is safe to use the 7bit form. The 8bit and binary forms may be usable in other mail transport contexts. Another Content-Transfer-Encoding value is x-token, which indicates that some other encoding scheme is used, for which a name is to be supplied. This could be a vendor-specific or application-specific scheme. The two actual encoding schemes defined are quoted-printable and base64. Two schemes are defined to provide a choice between a transfer technique that is essentially human readable and one that is safe for all types of data in a way that is reasonably compact.
The quoted-printable transfer encoding is useful when the data consists largely of octets that correspond to printable ASCII characters. In essence, it represents nonsafe characters by the hexadecimal representation of their code and introduces reversible (soft) line breaks to limit message lines to 76 characters. The base64 transfer encoding, also known as radix-64 encoding, is a common one for encoding arbitrary binary data in such a way as to be invulnerable to the processing by mail transport programs. It is also used in PGP and is described in Appendix 15B. A Multipart ExampleFigure 15.8, taken from RFC 2045, is the outline of a complex multipart message. The message has five parts to be displayed serially: two introductory plain text parts, an embedded multipart message, a richtext part, and a closing encapsulated text message in a non-ASCII character set. The embedded multipart message has two parts to be displayed in parallel, a picture and an audio fragment.
Canonical FormAn important concept in MIME and S/MIME is that of canonical form. Canonical form is a format, appropriate to the content type, that is standardized for use between systems. This is in contrast to native form, which is a format that may be peculiar to a particular system. Table 15.5, from RFC 2049, should help clarify this matter.
S/MIME FunctionalityIn terms of general functionality, S/MIME is very similar to PGP. Both offer the ability to sign and/or encrypt messages. In this subsection, we briefly summarize S/MIME capability. We then look in more detail at this capability by examining message formats and message preparation. FunctionsS/MIME provides the following functions:
Cryptographic AlgorithmsTable 15.6 summarizes the cryptographic algorithms used in S/MIME. S/MIME uses the following terminology, taken from RFC 2119 to specify the requirement level:
S/MIME incorporates three public-key algorithms. The Digital Signature Standard (DSS) described in Chapter 13 is the preferred algorithm for digital signature. S/MIME lists Diffie-Hellman as the preferred algorithm for encrypting session keys; in fact, S/MIME uses a variant of Diffie-Hellman that does provide encryption/decryption, known as ElGamal (see Problem 10.6). As an alternative, RSA, described in Chapter 9, can be used for both signatures and session key encryption. These are the same algorithms used in PGP and provide a high level of security. For the hash function used to create the digital signature, the specification requires the 160-bit SHA-1 but recommends receiver support for the 128-bit MD5 for backward compatibility with older versions of S/MIME. As we discussed in Chapter 12, there is justifiable concern about the security of MD5, so SHA-1 is clearly the preferred alternative. For message encryption, three-key triple DES (tripleDES) is recommended, but compliant implementations must support 40-bit RC2. The latter is a weak encryption algorithm but allows compliance with U.S. export controls. The S/MIME specification includes a discussion of the procedure for deciding which content encryption algorithm to use. In essence, a sending agent has two decisions to make. First, the sending agent must determine if the receiving agent is capable of decrypting using a given encryption algorithm. Second, if the receiving agent is only capable of accepting weakly encrypted content, the sending agent must decide if it is acceptable to send using weak encryption. To support this decision process, a sending agent may announce its decrypting capabilities in order of preference any message that it sends out. A receiving agent may store that information for future use. The following rules, in the following order, should be followed by a sending agent:
If a message is to be sent to multiple recipients and a common encryption algorithm cannot be selected for all, then the sending agent will need to send two messages. However, in that case, it is important to note that the security of the message is made vulnerable by the transmission of one copy with lower security. S/MIME MessagesS/MIME makes use of a number of new MIME content types, which are shown in Table 15.7. All of the new application types use the designation PKCS. This refers to a set of public-key cryptography specifications issued by RSA Laboratories and made available for the S/MIME effort.
We examine each of these in turn after first looking at the general procedures for S/MIME message preparation. Securing a MIME EntityS/MIME secures a MIME entity with a signature, encryption, or both. A MIME entity may be an entire message (except for the RFC 822 headers), or if the MIME content type is multipart, then a MIME entity is one or more of the subparts of the message. The MIME entity is prepared according to the normal rules for MIME message preparation. Then the MIME entity plus some security-related data, such as algorithm identifiers and certificates, are processed by S/MIME to produce what is known as a PKCS object. A PKCS object is then treated as message content and wrapped in MIME (provided with appropriate MIME headers). This process should become clear as we look at specific objects and provide examples. In all cases, the message to be sent is converted to canonical form. In particular, for a given type and subtype, the appropriate canonical form is used for the message content. For a multipart message, the appropriate canonical form is used for each subpart. The use of transfer encoding requires special attention. For most cases, the result of applying the security algorithm will be to produce an object that is partially or totally represented in arbitrary binary data. This will then be wrapped in an outer MIME message and transfer encoding can be applied at that point, typically base64. However, in the case of a multipart signed message, described in more detail later, the message content in one of the subparts is unchanged by the security process. Unless that content is 7bit, it should be transfer encoded using base64 or quoted-printable, so that there is no danger of altering the content to which the signature was applied. We now look at each of the S/MIME content types. EnvelopedDataAn application/pkcs7-mime subtype is used for one of four categories of S/MIME processing, each with a unique smime-type parameter. In all cases, the resulting entity, referred to as an object, is represented in a form known as Basic Encoding Rules (BER), which is defined in ITU-T Recommendation X.209. The BER format consists of arbitrary octet strings and is therefore binary data. Such an object should be transfer encoded with base64 in the outer MIME message. We first look at envelopedData. The steps for preparing an envelopedData MIME entity are as follows:
The RecipientInfo blocks followed by the encrypted content constitute the envelopedData. This information is then encoded into base64. A sample message (excluding the RFC 822 headers) is the following: Content-Type: application/pkcs7-mime; smime-type=enveloped- data; name=smime.p7m Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=smime.p7m rfvbnj75.6tbBghyHhHUujhJhjH77n8HHGT9HG4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYT6 7n8HHGghyHhHUujhJh4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYGTrfvbnjT6jH7756tbB9H f8HHGTrfvhJhjH776tbB9HG4VQbnj7567GhIGfHfYT6ghyHhHUujpfyF4 0GhIGfHfQbnj756YT64V To recover the encrypted message, the recipient first strips off the base64 encoding. Then the recipient's private key is used to recover the session key. Finally, the message content is decrypted with the session key. SignedDataThe signedData smime-type can actually be used with one or more signers. For clarity, we confine our description to the case of a single digital signature. The steps for preparing a signedData MIME entity are as follows:
The signedData entity consists of a series of blocks, including a message digest algorithm identifier, the message being signed, and SignerInfo. The signedData entity may also include a set of public-key certificates sufficient to constitute a chain from a recognized root or top-level certification authority to the signer. This information is then encoded into base64. A sample message (excluding the RFC 822 headers) is the following: Content-Type: application/pkcs7-mime; smime-type=signed-data; name=smime.p7m Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=smime.p7m 567GhIGfHfYT6ghyHhHUujpfyF4f8HHGTrfvhJhjH776tbB9HG4VQbnj7 77n8HHGT9HG4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYT6rfvbnj756tbBghyHhHUujhJhjH HUujhJh4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYGTrfvbnjT6jH7756tbB9H7n8HHGghyHh 6YT64V0GhIGfHfQbnj75 To recover the signed message and verify the signature, the recipient first strips off the base64 encoding. Then the signer's public key is used to decrypt the message digest. The recipient independently computes the message digest and compares it to the decrypted message digest to verify the signature. Clear SigningClear signing is achieved using the multipart content type with a signed subtype. As was mentioned, this signing process does not involve transforming the message to be signed, so that the message is sent "in the clear." Thus, recipients with MIME capability but not S/MIME capability are able to read the incoming message. A multipart/signed message has two parts. The first part can be any MIME type but must be prepared so that it will not be altered during transfer from source to destination. This means that if the first part is not 7bit, then it needs to be encoded using base64 or quoted-printable. Then this part is processed in the same manner as signedData, but in this case an object with signedData format is created that has an empty message content field. This object is a detached signature. It is then transfer encoded using base64 to become the second part of the multipart/signed message. This second part has a MIME content type of application and a subtype of pkcs7-signature. Here is a sample message: Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"; micalg=sha1; boundary=boundary42 boundary42 Content-Type: text/plain This is a clear-signed message. boundary42 Content-Type: application/pkcs7-signature; name=smime.p7s Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=smime.p7s ghyHhHUujhJhjH77n8HHGTrfvbnj756tbB9HG4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYT6 4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYT6jH77n8HHGghyHhHUujhJh756tbB9HGTrfvbnj n8HHGTrfvhJhjH776tbB9HG4VQbnj7567GhIGfHfYT6ghyHhHUujpfyF4 7GhIGfHfYT64VQbnj756 boundary42 The protocol parameter indicates that this is a two-part clear-signed entity. The micalg parameter indicates the type of message digest used. The receiver can verify the signature by taking the message digest of the first part and comparing this to the message digest recovered from the signature in the second part. Registration RequestTypically, an application or user will apply to a certification authority for a public-key certificate. The application/pkcs10 S/MIME entity is used to transfer a certification request. The certification request includes certificationRequestInfo block, followed by an identifier of the public-key encryption algorithm, followed by the signature of the certificationRequestInfo block, made using the sender's private key. The certificationRequestInfo block includes a name of the certificate subject (the entity whose public key is to be certified) and a bit-string representation of the user's public key. Certificates-Only MessageA message containing only certificates or a certificate revocation list (CRL) can be sent in response to a registration request. The message is an application/pkcs7-mime type/subtype with an smime-type parameter of degenerate. The steps involved are the same as those for creating a signedData message, except that there is no message content and the signerInfo field is empty. S/MIME Certificate ProcessingS/MIME uses public-key certificates that conform to version 3 of X.509 (see Chapter 14). The key-management scheme used by S/MIME is in some ways a hybrid between a strict X.509 certification hierarchy and PGP's web of trust. As with the PGP model, S/MIME managers and/or users must configure each client with a list of trusted keys and with certificate revocation lists. That is, the responsibility is local for maintaining the certificates needed to verify incoming signatures and to encrypt outgoing messages. On the other hand, the certificates are signed by certification authorities. User Agent RoleAn S/MIME user has several key-management functions to perform:
VeriSign CertificatesThere are several companies that provide certification authority (CA) services. For example, Nortel has designed an enterprise CA solution and can provide S/MIME support within an organization. There are a number of Internet-based CAs, including VeriSign, GTE, and the U.S. Postal Service. Of these, the most widely used is the VeriSign CA service, a brief description of which we now provide. VeriSign provides a CA service that is intended to be compatible with S/MIME and a variety of other applications. VeriSign issues X.509 certificates with the product name VeriSign Digital ID. As of early 1998, over 35,000 commercial Web sites were using VeriSign Server Digital IDs, and over a million consumer Digital IDs had been issued to users of Netscape and Microsoft browsers. The information contained in a Digital ID depends on the type of Digital ID and its use. At a minimum, each Digital ID contains
Digital IDs can also contain other user-supplied information, including
VeriSign provides three levels, or classes, of security for public-key certificates, as summarized in Table 15.8. A user requests a certificate online at VeriSign's Web site or other participating Web sites. Class 1 and Class 2 requests are processed on line, and in most cases take only a few seconds to approve. Briefly, the following procedures are used:
Enhanced Security ServicesAs of this writing, three enhanced security services have been proposed in an Internet draft. The details of these may change, and additional services may be added. The three services are as follows:
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