A Practical Study of E-mail Communication through SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an application layer protocol for e-mail communication. It has been adopted as a standard by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). SMTP has set conversational and grammatical rules for exchanging messages between connected computers. It has evolved through several revisions and extensions since its formation by Jon Postel in 1981. In SMTP, the sender establishes a full-duplex transmission channel with a receiver. The receiver may be either the ultimate destination or an intermediate forwarding agent. SMTP commands are issued by the sender and are sent to the receiver, which responds to these commands through codes. Each SMTP session between the sender and the receiver consists of three phases namely: connection establishment, mail transactions and connection termination. This paper describes and illustrates the process of e-mail communication through SMTP by issuing the individual SMTP commands directly to transmit e-mail messages. It also describes individual SMTP commands and extensions with practical implementation using a Telnet client

A security analysis of email communications

The objective of this report is to analyse the security and privacy risks of email communications and identify technical countermeasures capable of mitigating them effectively. In order to do so, the report analyses from a technical point of view the core set of communication protocols and standards that support email communications in order to identify and understand the existing security and privacy vulnerabilities. On the basis of this analysis, the report identifies and analyses technical countermeasures, in the form of newer standards, protocols and tools, aimed at ensuring a better protection of the security and privacy of email communications. The practical implementation of each countermeasure is evaluated in order to understand its limitations and identify potential technical and organisational constrains that could limit its effectiveness in practice. The outcome of the above mentioned analysis is a set of recommendations regarding technical and organisational measures that when combined properly have the potential of more effectively mitigating the privacy and security risks of today's email communications.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

Comparison of different ways to avoid internet traffic interception

Projecte fet en col.laboració amb la Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Department of Telematic EngineeringEnglish: The main objective of this thesis is to analyze and compare different ways to avoid the Internet traffic eavesdropping (carried out both by governments or malicious particulars). The analysis consists on a description of the different protocols and technologies involved in each option as well as the difficulties to implement them and the technical knowledge of the users in order to take profit of them

Unified Internet Messaging

As telephony services, mobile services and internet services continue to converge, the prospect of providing Unified Messaging and even Unified Communications becomes increasingly achievable. This paper discusses the growing importance of IP-based networks to Unified Messaging developments and examines some of the key services and protocols that are likely to make Unified Messaging more widely available. In this initial paper, we limit ourselves initially to the unification of text-based messaging using SMS and Email. The approach we make is based on the existing Internet Email framework but will take cognisance of the need to add voice and other non-text based messaging and communications at a later stage. Ultimately, the research project aims to build a working prototype of a generic messaging model that works for both non realtime and real-time communications. This model will provide a framework into which existing and future messaging protocols can be plugged. This paper originated from an applied research project which examined the integration possibilities for various messaging and communications protocol

Multi-Media Mail in heterogeneous Networks

The MIME approach seems to be the most reasonable effort for allowing the sending and receiving of multimedia messages using standard Internet mail transport facilities. Providing new header fields, such as MIME-Version, Content-Type, and Content- Transfer-Encoding, it is now possible to include various kinds of information types, e.g. audio, images, richtext, or video, into a RFC 822-conformant mail. Making use of these headers, it is possible to fully describe an attached body part, so that a receiving mail user agent is able to display it without any loss of information. Additionally, the definition of the "multipart" and "message" content types allows the creation of hierarchical structured mails, e.g. a message containing two alternative parts of information, one that can be shown using a simple ASCII-terminal, the other to be displayed on a multimedia workstation. Allowing the definition of bilaterally defined content types and providing a standardized means of establishing new content types prevent MIME from being a one-way road and supply mechanisms to extend MIME for future use

Unifying Internet Services Using Distributed Shared Objects

Developing wide area applications such as those for sharing data across the Internet is unnecessarily difficult. The main problem is the widespread use of a communication paradigm that is too low level. We will show how wide area application development can be made easier when using distributed shared objects instead of a communication-oriented model. An object in our model is physically distributed, with multiple copies of its state on different machines. All implementation aspects such as replication, distribution, and migration of state, are hidden from users through an object's interface. In this paper, we concentrate on the application of distributed shared objects, by providing an outline of a middleware solution that permits integration of the Internet services for e-mail, News, file transfer, and Web documents. vrije Universiteit Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science 1 Introduction Constructing wide area applications, such as those for sharing data across the Internet,..

Collaborative intelligent email ranking system

Email has become one of the most powerful communication tools today. It is has widely proliferated in both business and personal use. It allows for fast communication between multiple parties that can be easily understood by even the most novice user, and allows for advanced transfer of data for power users. Even with that, it is one of the most abused systems on the Internet. Email systems have allowed for widespread distribution of the worst viruses on the Internet, causing billions of dollars in damage. Most of the technologies that have been deployed to prevent these types of attacks have been thwarted; A new email protocol is required to implement accreditation, authentication and reputation to overcome these issues. This new system is a combination of currently accepted systems, along with additions to make them more effective as a whole. This new system is called Collaborative Intelligent Email Ranking System (CIERS)