Understanding the limitations of S/MIME digital signatures for e-mails: a GUI based approach

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2008.09.003

S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a well-known standard for secure e-mail exchange. S/MIME builds its identity management on e-mail addresses, rather than real names. This fact may sometimes cause sending a signed e-mail with a bogus name on it. Moreover, header information of a signed e-mail message, such as subject and name, can be altered without affecting the verifiability of the signature. This paper spots the details of such problems of S/MIME and discusses some solutions from both developer and user points of view. Moreover, GUI considerations about these problems are also analyzed in this paper. An ideal GUI is modeled and developed.