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PEM is the Internet Privacy-Enhanced Mail standard, designed, proposed,
but not yet officially adopted, by the Internet Activities Board in
order to provide secure electronic mail over the Internet. Designed to
work with current Internet e-mail formats, PEM includes encryption,
authentication, and key management, and allows use of both public-key
and secret-key cryptosystems. Multiple cryptographic tools are
supported: for each mail message, the specific encryption algorithm,
digital signature algorithm, hash function, and so on are specified in
the header. PEM explicitly supports only a few cryptographic
algorithms; others may be added later. DES in CBC mode is currently the
only message encryption algorithm supported, and both RSA and DES are
supported for the key management. PEM also supports the use of
certificates, endorsing the CCITT X.509 standard for certificate
structure.
The details of PEM can be found in Internet RFCs (Requests For
Comments) 1421 through 1424. PEM is likely to be officially adopted by
the Internet Activities Board within one year. Trusted Information
Systems has developed a free non-commercial implementation of PEM, and
other implementations should soon be available as well.
Next: 3.8.8 What is RIPEM?
Up: 3.8 Misceallenous
Previous: 3.8.6 What are RC2
Denis Arnaud
12/19/1997