Privacy-Enhanced Electronic Mail (pem) Charter


NOTE: This charter is accurate as of the 31st IETF Meeting in San Jose. It may now be out-of-date. (Consider this a "snapshot" of the working group from that meeting.) Up-to-date charters for all active working groups can be found elsewhere in this Web server.

Chair(s)

Security Area Director(s):

Mailing List Information

Description of Working Group

PEM is the outgrowth of work by the Privacy and Security Research Group (PSRG) of the IRTF. At the heart of PEM is a set of procedures for transforming RFC 822 messages in such a fashion as to provide integrity, data origin authenticity, and, optionally, confidentiality. PEM may be employed with either symmetric or asymmetric cryptographic key distribution mechanisms. Because the asymmetric (public-key) mechanisms are better suited to the large scale, heterogeneously administered environment characteristic of the Internet, to date only those mechanisms have been standardized. The standard form adopted by PEM is largely a profile of the CCITT X.509 (Directory Authentication Framework) recommendation.

PEM is defined by a series of documents. The first in the series defines the message processing procedures. The second defines the public-key certification system adopted for use with PEM. The third provides definitions and identifiers for various algorithms used by PEM. The fourth defines message formats and conventions for user registration, Certificate Revocation List (CRL) distribution, etc. (The first three of these were previously issued as RFCs 1113, 1114 and 1115. All documents have been revised and are being issued first as Internet-Drafts.)

Goals and Milestones

Done
Submit first, third, and fourth documents as Internet-Drafts.
Ongoing
Revise Proposed Standards and submit to IESG for consideration as a Draft Standard, and repeat for consideration as an Internet Standard.
Done
Submit second document as an Internet-Draft.
Done
First IETF working group meeting to review Internet-Drafts.
Done
Submit revised Internet-Drafts based on comments received during working group meeting, from pem-dev mailing list, etc.
Done
Submit Internet-Drafts to IESG for consideration as Proposed Standards.
Done
Post an Internet-Draft of the MIME/PEM Interaction specification.
Apr 93
Submit the PEM/MIME specification to the IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.

Current Internet-Drafts

Request for Comments