A Secure Web Email System Based on IBC

Abstract

Email clients supporting encryption and signature are mostly based on the PKI (public key infrastructure) system, and users need their own digital certificates to send secure mails. This leads to a series of complicated operation problems with digital certificates. IBC (Identity-based cryptography) is an asymmetric algorithm, with the user's unique identity information and a set of public parameters combined as a public key. It avoids the problems with PKI and is a good substitute for PKI. However, current standard applications including email clients do not support IBC algorithm. In this work, we use pseudo-RSA digital certificate technology to bridge the gap. The technology stores an IBC key in an RSA certificate structure, generates secure email in SMIME format, making the resulted email compatible with SMIME enabled software. The focus of this work is on secure web email. To achieve cross-platform applicability, non-plug-ins technology is employed for the proposed secure web email system.