Re: Are certificates _required_ by the sender?

["Housley, Russ" <[e-mail]>]

Terry:

To sign a message, the originator needs to have a certificate that contains 
the public key that will be used by the recipient to validate the signature.

To encrypt a message, the originator need not have a certificate; however, 
the recipient will generally not be able to authenticate the source of the 
message unless it is signed.

Russ

At 04:26 AM 5/8/2002 -0500, Terje Tollisen wrote:

>Is the sender of an email required to have a certificate, or is it 
>sufficient for the sender to have a copy of the certificate of the 
>recipient? I am thinking of an automated system, where one party will 
>always be the sender, and never receive emails. In addition, no signatures 
>are required. Thus nobody will ever actually need the public key for the 
>automated system. However, I'm uncertain if the sender can send S/MIME 
>messages without having a certificate of it's own.
>
>Thanks for your time
>-Terry Tollisen
>
>--
>_______________________________________________
>Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
>http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup