Protocol Action: Reuse of CMS Content Encryption Keys to Proposed Standard
The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org> Mon, 01 October 2001 11:36 UTC
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From: The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>
Subject: Protocol Action: Reuse of CMS Content Encryption Keys to Proposed Standard
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 06:58:54 -0400
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The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Reuse of CMS Content Encryption Keys' <draft-ietf-smime-rcek-04.txt> as a Proposed Standard. This document is the product of the S/MIME Mail Security Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Jeffrey Schiller and Marcus Leech. Technical Summary SMIME's Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) provides a way to use public key cryptography to encrypt a symmetric key which in turn is used to encrypt the content of the message. There are applications where two parties may need to exchange multiple messages and wish to avoid the overhead of the public key operation (public key cryptography is much more computationally expensive then symmetric algorithms). This document defines a secure way of labeling the symmetric key (called the Content Encryption Key or CEK) in a message such that it may be used as a Key Encrypting Key (KEK) for a later message. This technique is not advisable for just any application and the document explains where it makes sense and where it doesn't. Working Group Summary The S/MIME Working Group came to consensus on this document. Protocol Quality This protocol was reviewed for the IESG by Jeffrey I. Schiller.