Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-lindsey-usefor-signed-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 06:41:09 -0400

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: Signed Headers in Mail and Netnews
	Author(s)	: C. Lindsey
	Filename	: draft-lindsey-usefor-signed-00.txt
	Pages		: 29
	Date		: 04-May-00
	
The huge growth of Netnews/Usenet in recent years has been
accompanied by many attempts to abuse the system by various forms
of malpractice, particularly the forging of various headers,
causing it to appear that articles came from parties other than
those that actually injected them or conveyed some Approval that
the real poster was not entitled to give. Insofar as Netnews is
regularly gatwayed to and from Email systems, these problems also
extend to the Email domain.
This document provides a cryptographically secure means whereby it
can be established beyond doubt that relevant headers of a Netnews
article or an Email message have not been tampered with in
transit, and that they were indeed originated by the person
purporting to have done so. It seeks to supplement, rather than to
supplant, the existing protocols for signing the bodies of
articles and messages.
[This proposal arises from the activities of the Usenet Format Working
Group, which is charged with updating the Netnews standards. Comments
are invited, preferably sent to the mailing list of the Group at
[email-masked].]

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