Secure E-Mail System Using S/Mime and Ib-Pkc

Abstract

Although e-mail security solutions have been introduced for more than two decades, most of the e-mail messages are sent nowadays without being secured by any of these techniques. This is due to the complexity of using these secure e-mail systems and protocols. The complexity mainly arises from the difficulty associated with managing certificates and public keys. The main objective of this study was to find a solution that can make secure e-mail systems easier to use while maintaining the same level of security. This paper proposes a secure email system that is based on the S/MIME standard where the public key and signature algorithms have been replaced by their IdentityBased Cryptography analogue algorithms. Using Identity-Based Cryptography has eliminated the need for digital certificates, and provided a solution to the usability problem present in the existing secure e-mail systems. Users can determine the public key of the recipient without having to contact any trusted third party, and can start encrypting or verifying messages as long as they have the public system parameters that can be publicly available. Users need to contact the Private Key Generator (PKG) only once in order to retrieve their private key before being able to decrypt or sign messages.