Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!pacbell.com!decwrl!limbo!taylor
From: bradley@cs.utexas.edu (Bradley L. Richards)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Mail security/Using news for internal communications
Message-ID: <1618@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 10 Jan 91 11:25:08 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: Dept of Computer Sciences, UTexas, Austin
Lines: 18
Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

David Gast noted:

> Mail is not secure either... there are well known, previously published 
> methods of faking mail addresses.

A question which has been bothering me lately:  with readily available
public-key algorithms, why hasn't the idea of secure mail caught on?
I, for one, would very much like to be able to send sensitive business
and personal messages securely by e-mail.  But as long as messages are
transmitted and stored in unencrypted form on insecure machines, it's
foolish to do so.

It seems a simple matter to implement public key encryption, using a
standard algorithm (e.g., RSA), so that one could send a secure
message merely by providing both the recipient's mail address and
their public encryption key.

Bradley