MIME - What is it?
MIME (Mulitpurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a protocol that describes the format of Internet messages. MIME allows messages to contain arbitrary binary files. A Server will insert the MIME header at the start of a Web transmission. The Client will use this header to find an appication that can 'play' the type of data the header contains. Word processing files such as .doc or worksheet files such as .xls etc. can be sent via the internet (as an attachment to an email message) in a non-text form.
In summation, it allows a Web Server to tell a browser what type of file is to be displayed e.g. tiff, gif, jpeg etc. When a browser receives HTML it can display that itself, however, if it is sent a file of type tiff etc. it must use an external viewer to display the MIME type.
As stated earlier, a MIME message is identified by special headers that give information about the message:
MIME-Version: Gives the Version of MIME used.
Content-Type: Gives the identification of the messages data e.g. text, application, image, video, audio etc.
Content-Transfer-Encoding: Identifies the type of text encoding used. MIME caters for the following encodings; 7bit, 8bit, binary, base64 and quoted-printable.
For example:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Tyoe: image/jpeg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 |
S/MIME - What is it?
S/MIME (Secure Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a secure method of sending e-mail that uses the RSA encryption system.
RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) is an Internet encryption and authentication system that uses an algorithm developed in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. The RSA algorithm is the most commonly used encryption and authentication algorithm.
S/MIME was created to solve email interception and forgery. The objective of S/MIME is to protect sensitive data from prying eyes.
The two basic features of this type of security are privacy (only the intended recipient can read the message) and authentication (the recipient can be assured of the identity of the sender).
MIME itself, described in the IETF standard called Request for Comments 1521, spells out how an electronic message will be organized. S/MIME describes how encryption information and a digital certificate can be included as part of the message body. S/MIME follows the syntax provided in the Public-Key Cryptography Standard format #7
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MIME & S/MIME
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