Subject: Re: e-Government uses "Authority-stamp-signatures"

From: [email-masked] (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 15:45:16 +1300

[CC'd across to ietf-smime]

"Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]> writes:

>It may be interesting to know that Swedish authorities are currently
>launching a Web Services-like system called SHS, where authorities
>communicate with each other through web-server "nodes" where out-going
>messages are automatically signed by the authority identified as an "entity"
>(organization), rather by an individual associated to the authority.

Does this follow a particular model like DOMSEC, or is it yet another roll-
your-own?  There appear to be a number of groups doing DOMSEC-like things, but
everyone's doing it differently...

Peter.

---

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 18:04:39 +0100

Peter,

Late-breaking news received off-list!  Apparently the Estonian 
(http://www.cyber.ee/infosecurity/projects/xroad-pilt.html )
and Italian e-Governments are also working along similar lines
as their Swedish counterpart.  Everybody seems wanting to get
credit for being a part of the paradigm-shift!  Who's next? :-)

now to the technicalities....

As you probably have noted, technologies for server-based secure
messaging are currently in a state of extreme flux, so all efforts
are likely to be more or less "home-brewed".  Or built on s.c.
"standards" that are obsoleted a year or two after being intro-
duced which is about the same thing. :-(

I believe that DOMSEC has unfortunately already met its maker.
Even SMTP and S/MIME will diminish in importance due to the
"Web Services" craze.  The practically "frictionless" [transport]
encryption offered by HTTPS as well as the support for synchronous
operation are absolutely crucial in many scenarios.   SMTP will
in the O2O context probably be "degraded" to a user-notification-
tool for otherwise Web Services-based messaging and work-flow.

Long-term all these systems will probably (hopefully?) converge into
"true" Web Services using WS-Security and XML Signatures.

cheers
Anders R

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Gutmann" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 03:45
Subject: Re: e-Government uses "Authority-stamp-signatures"

Peter.