Handling Encrypted Email at the Gateway of a Network

Subramanian, Nalin V., Wagner, Bradley and Khader, Yousef (2004) Handling Encrypted Email at the Gateway of a Network. Technical Report, Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Abstract

Protection for email is provided by client side encryption from being read or hacked. But the security risk in this protection is that it also protects virus from being sensed by the anti virus software. It also hides the hacker’s destructive payload. The encrypted message can’t be examined by any anti virus software rather filtered by content specific filtering engine. In case of providing perimeter defense for email virus, the network administrator faces the problem of disclosing the email or denies sending the email. If the email is allowed then network is not secure, if the message is disclosed then the message privacy is not maintained. Hence we suggest having an Email Virus Certification Authority which certifies all the emails sent from the message generating gateway or mail exchange server. This paper addresses the above problem and provides a theoretical solution for such security and privacy issue. Simple simulation is also implemented.