The S/MIME code currently in NSS is designed specifically for integration into Communicator 4.x and not for integration into Mozilla. Only S/MIME version 2 functionality is currently supported. We would like the S/MIME Toolkit to address these limitations. We want to provide an easy-to-use toolkit that interfaces with a variety of MIME parsers. We do not currently plan to provide a MIME parser as part of the toolkit. For information about the Mozilla MIME parser project, see libmime.

Project Information

• S/MIME support in the Mozilla mail/news client
.
• A Perl module that can be used to generate and process S/MIME messages using Perl scripts.

We also want to implement support for important CMS (Cryptographic Message Syntax, aka PKCS #7 v2.0) and S/MIME version 3 features. The goal is to have full S/MIME v3 compatibility in the future. A side effect of this work could be an API for CMS messages. This would be used to generate and process cryptographic messages outside of the email/MIME context.

The S/MIME Toolkit will be implemented on top of the core NSS crypto and PKI services, as suggested in this figure:

For information about ASN.1, see ASN.1.

Our current task list includes the following:

• Define and document a first cut at an API. This would not be cast in stone. The first review and implementation will show weaknesses that might need to be corrected.
• Review the API to determine fitness for inclusion into various MIME parsers, changing the API definition where necessary.
• Change existing code and create new code to implement the API. We want to have something working before we start extending the functionality.
• Create a test harness that can ideally be integrated into the build process.
• Create a prioritized list of further tasks, such as: Implement CMS and S/MIME v3 features.

Status Summary

We are now preparing the code for posting on mozilla.org.