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09 Electronic Mail Security Part 1

its the electronic mail secuirty report that tells the details of the mail... how to make it secure.

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38 views11 pages

09 Electronic Mail Security Part 1

its the electronic mail secuirty report that tells the details of the mail... how to make it secure.

Uploaded by

mBilal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture

Network Security 09
Electronic Mail Security

Mr. Syed Muhammad Sajjad


Senior Lecturer,
Department of Cyber-Security and Data Science
Riphah Institute of Systems Engineering (RISE),
Riphah International University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Email Protocols
• Two types of protocols are used for
transferring email:
• Used to move messages through the Internet
from source to destination
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
• Used to transfer messages between mail
servers
• IMAP and POP are the most commonly used
SMTP
Encapsulates an email
message in an envelope
Simple Mail Transfer and is used to relay the
Protocol encapsulated messages
from source to destination
through multiple MTAs

Is a text-based client-server
protocol

The term Extended SMTP


Was originally specified in (ESMTP) is often used to
1982 as RFC 821 refer to later versions of
SMTP
STARTTLS
• A significant security-related extension for SMTP

• Defined in RFC 3207 (SMTP Service Extension for Secure


SMTP over Transport Layer Security, February 2002)

• Enables the addition of confidentiality and authentication


in the exchange between SMTP agents

• This gives SMTP agents the ability to protect some or all of


their communication from eavesdroppers and attackers

• Advantage of using STARTTLS is that the server can offer


SMTP service on a single port, rather than requiring
separate port numbers for secure and cleartext operations
Mail Access Protocols

POP3 IMAP
• Post Office Protocol • Internet Mail Access Protocol

• Allows an email client to • Enables an email client to


download an email from an access mail on an email server
email server (MTA)
• Also uses TCP, with server TCP
• POP3 user agents connect port 143
via TCP to the server
• Is more complex than POP3
• After authorization, the UA
can issue POP3 commands • Provides stronger
to retrieve and delete mail authentication and provides
other functions not
supported by POP3
RFC 5322
• Defines a format for text messages that are sent
using electronic mail
• Messages are viewed as having an envelope and
contents
• The envelope contains whatever information is
needed to accomplish transmission and delivery
• The contents compose the object to be delivered to
the recipient
• RFC 5322 standard applies only to the contents

• The content standard includes a set of header


fields that may be used by the mail system to
create the envelope
Example Message
Date: October 8, 2009 2:15:49 PM EDT
From: “William Stallings” <[email protected]>
Subject: The Syntax in RFC 5322
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]

Hello. This section begins the actual


message body, which is delimited from the
message heading by a blank line.
Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (MIME)
MIME specification includes the following elements:
• An extension to the RFC 5322
framework that is intended
to address some of the
problems and limitations of Transfer encodings Five new message
the use of Simple Mail are defined that header fields are
Transfer Protocol (SMTP) enable the defined, which may
conversion of any be included in an
• Is intended to resolve RFC 5322 header;
content format into
these problems in a a form that is these fields provide
manner that is compatible protected from information about
with existing RFC 5322 alteration by the the body of the
implementations mail system message
• The specification is
provided in RFCs 2045
through 2049 A number of content
formats are defined, thus
standardizing
representations that
support multimedia
electronic mail
Limitations of the SMTP/5322
Scheme
• SMTP cannot transmit executable files or other binary
objects

• SMTP cannot transmit text data that includes national


language characters

• SMTP servers may reject mail message over a certain size

• SMTP gateways that translate between ASCII and the


character code EBCDIC do not use a consistent set of
mappings, resulting in translation problems

• SMTP gateways to X.400 electronic mail networks cannot


handle nontextual data included in X.400 messages

• Some SMTP implementations do not adhere completely to


the SMTP standards defined in RFC 821

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