Internet Research Group Proposes Better Email Standard

Mar 22, 2016

Improvements to SMTP will provide better guarantee of confidentiality

A group of researchers at some of the leading Internet companies have released the draft of a new mechanism for mail service providers to declare their ability to receive TLS-based secure email connections. The new feature fixes a flaw in the SMTP STS extension, which was supposed to be an update for mail security but failed to guarantee confidentiality or proof of server authenticity.

The new document proposes a means for the receiving server to declare its TLS support in advance, thus eliminating the negotiation phase, which makes the protocol vulnerable to various attack techniques. See the article in the Register for additional information.

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