Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

German infosec bureaucrats want mail providers to encrypt

Spook-busting IETF work gets nod from Federal Office of Information Security

It's not so often that the dense and often dull documents that are our Internet standards attract the endorsement of governments, but that's what has happened with RFC 7672.

Part of 'net boffins' ongoing effort to rewrite standards for better privacy, the standards-track RFC (SMTP Security via Opportunistic DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)) is designed to improve email security, by letting SMTP message transfer agents authenticate each other and apply TLS to connections.

Endorsement of the idea comes from no lesser an agency than Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, according to local site Heise.

Heise reports that the office has released a technical directive, BSI TR-03108, urging German email providers to implement the RFC. The directive, in German, is here.

Putting away the forklift

The problem with SMTP, as the RFC states, is that right now there's no requirement that traffic between message transfer agents be encrypted: "neither e-mail addresses nor MX hostnames signal a requirement for either secure or cleartext transport".

DANE TLSA records, the RFC states, give (for example) a mail server a way to say "I support TLS", and publish how SMTP clients can authenticate servers.

While the world will still have both clients and servers that don't encrypt – these can still communicate in clear-text or using manually-configured security – the RFC means encryption can be implemented incrementally, rather than trying to get a billion forklifts upgrading a billion mail servers and clients at once. ®

 

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like