Basic secure E-mail process
All secure E-mail systems work roughly the same way.
- Calculate a checksum on the message
- Encrypt the mail with a session key (random)
- Encrypt the checksum with your own secret key
- Encrypt the session key with the recipient's public key
The recipient must:
- Decrypt the session key with his own secret key
- Decrypt the checksum with your public key
- Decrypt the message
- Calculate a checksum and compare it to the one you sent
The encrypted checksum serves as both signature and integrity check.
Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no
Last modified: Fri Nov 10 14:57:03 1995