Subject: Are certificates _required_ by the sender?

From: "Terje Tollisen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 04:26:12 -0500

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

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From: "Ben Littauer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 12:08:13 -0400

Interesting you should ask this right now.  I don't believe that there is
any S/MIME requirement that says that the sender needs a cert.  That said,
however, MS Outlook DOES require that you have a cert before it will let you
encrypt a message on someone else's cert that you've received.  Does anyone
know why this is?

-ben-

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Terje Tollisen
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 5:26
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Are certificates _required_ by the sender?

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

---

From: "Housley, Russ" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:06:58 -0400

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:

>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