Protocol Action: Cryptographic Message Syntax to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved publication of the following Internet-Drafts as
Proposed Standards:

 o Cryptographic Message Syntax <draft-ietf-smime-cms-13.txt> 
 o Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Method <draft-ietf-smime-x942-07.txt> 
 o S/MIME Version 3 Certificate Handling <draft-ietf-smime-cert-08.txt>
 o S/MIME Version 3 Message Specification <draft-ietf-smime-msg-08.txt>
 o Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME <draft-ietf-smime-ess-12.txt>

These documents are the product of the S/MIME Mail Security Working Group.
The IESG contact persons are Jeffrey Schiller and Marcus Leech.


Technical Summary
 
These documents describe Version 3 of S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions). S/MIME provides for the secure
communication of MIME Objects, providing Authentication, Integrity and
Confidentiality protection. It can be used wherever MIME is used, as
it is fully conformant with the general MIME specifications. The
documents here provide for the basic message syntax and semantics as
well as the certificate and key management infrastructure
required. This work is coordinated and builds upon the work of the
IETF X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Working Group (PKIX).

In addition to the basic security services mentioned above, several
optional services are described. These include signed receipt
handling, security labeling of objects, secure mailing lists and
signing certificates.

Working Group Summary

The working group came to consensus on the work described here. A lot
of people contributed thoughtful, useful and constructive comments
during the review periods which resulted in further improvements
reflected in these documents.

Jeffrey I. Schiller reviewed the specification for IESG.