more on TRIPOLI

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: John Shoch <shoch () xx com>
Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 16:29:19 -0700
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on TRIPOLI

Dave,
For IP, if appropriate (but please remove my email address).
--------------------------------------

I read the Tripoli Overview, and enjoyed it.  It is advertised as a work in
progress, so I'm sure future efforts will include a bit more about prior
technical work.

Authenticating email senders is a very good idea -- and it was a very good
idea when described by Roger Needham (recently deceased) and Mike Schroeder
25 years ago.  If people are interested in early work on this topic, they
might enjoy the original paper, "Using encryption for authentication in
large networks of computers," published in the CACM in Dec. 1978.  I'm sure
it is available in other places, but I found an on-line version at:
http://lambda.cs.yale.edu/cs422/doc/needham.pdf.  One of the functions they
describe is, "Authenticated one-way communication, such as is found in mail
systems...."

Furthermore, these early ideas were actually implemented in the Xerox/XNS
internet protocols and mail system.  You might receive an email from
"Farber@xxx (unauthenticated)" or from "Farber@xxx (authenticated by abc)"
-- and you could react accordingly.

There has been a lot more work following the Needham & Schroeder paper, and
of course the environment has gotten a LOT more complex (I won't even touch
the political and business problems).  But I hope we don't completely lose
track of where we came from.  (Remember, there were other internetworks
besides "the Internet" and there were other mail architectures besides
SMTP.....)

Your loyal curmudgeon and occasional historian,
John Shoch
Alloy Ventures

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 3:00 PM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] more on TRIPOLI


Lauren did say it is a work in progress djf



------ End of Forwarded Message

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