Practical and secure e-mail system (PractiSES)

  • Authors:

  • Albert Levi;Mahmut Özcan

  • Affiliations:

  • Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey;Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey

  • Venue:
  • ADVIS'04 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Advances in Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

In this paper, a practical and secure e-mail system (called “PractiSES”) that performs public key distribution and management in a unique way is proposed. PractiSES is a network of several domains. At the domain level, a designated PractiSES server, which is trusted by all users of that domain, distributes the public keys. If a user needs another user's public key at a different domain, then inter-domain communication is carried out. PractiSES clients manage their public keys and obtain public keys of other users by using unique, secure and user-transparent protocols. PractiSES clients can exchange e-mails in encrypted and/or signed fashion. Since on-demand fetching of public keys is aimed in PractiSES, use of certificates is limited for inter-domain communications only; no certificates are used within a domain. Our simulations show that a state-of-the-art PC would be sufficient to serve as PractiSES server of a medium-size organization.