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Re: Why are mail servers not also key servers?

"John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Thu, 20 April 2017 20:54 UTC

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Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 20:54:34 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: Why are mail servers not also key servers?
In-Reply-To: <FC831208-97A3-4F1B-A37C-F8646C3FB208@gmail.com>
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In article <FC831208-97A3-4F1B-A37C-F8646C3FB208@gmail.com> you write:
>> SMTP servers could be key servers without having the private key of
>> individuals?
>
>Sure. If they double as HTTPS servers.

As others have noted, this topic has come up more than a few times before.

Here's a recent draft we wrote for a simple per domain https key
server, based almost entirely on existing standards.  It distributes
public keys.  Managing your private keys on all of your MUAs remains
as intractable a problem as it's always been.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bhjl-x509-srv/

R's,
John

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