CryptoMail Newsletter

CryptoMail.org publishes the CryptoMail News-letter to provide information about secure web based email communication.

Code and Protocol Development

Finally getting around to read the RFC 2440, our chief developer, Joshua Teitelbaum is currently developing a backward compatible Java 1.1 compliant PGP library.  While the RFC 2440 documentation needs to be interpreted with some effort, the Cryptix’s code is very well written for implementation.  For that reason, Joshua intends to borrow some codes and concepts from Cryptix (http://www.cryptix.org) in the new development of CryptoMail Email System.  Without using the entirety of software infrastructure from Cryptix, our e-mail system is going to use OpenPGP as the main format, so majority web browers in the Internet can be used to view and compose encrypted e-mails.

Joshua’s main goal in this code and protocol development is to engineer the CryptoMail Email System to allow people to send encrypted e-mails from one e-mail server to another e-mail server via imported OpenPGP keys.

Unfortunately, there will be a while before anything actually works.  Hopefully, the library will be done within a couple of months.

Website Updates

Our webmaster, Peter Leung updated our website to reflect the most up-to-day information about the CryptoMail Service and Email System.

The key change in our website is the word used to describe the general philosophy of our software and documentation distributions.  We change from “Open-Source” to “Free Software”, since an open source project has no mean of giving away our works openly and freely to the general public.  We share this philosophy with people in the Free Software Foundation.  For better explanation of this philosophy, you can find it at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy.

He also updated the System Requirements and Getting Started pages for the current release, 0.99 CryptoMail Email System.  In this update, he provides additional information about the most current computer platforms and systems that can run our email system, including further support for the GNU web browsers and operating system.

With JVM detection in our website, for whom have the Sun’s Java Virtual Machine installed and enabled in their Internet Explorer, now, you are able to load the Sun’s Java JAR.  For detail information, you can find it in the next section of this newsletter, “Using the Sun’s Java Virtual Machine Plug-In in the Internet Explorer.”

Using the Sun’s Java Virtual Machine Plug-In in the Internet Explorer

Last month, we placed a Browser Option check box in the Sign Up and Login sections of our website.  The check box was designed to allow people to load a JAR file for the Java Applet, so people with the Sun’s Java Virtual Machine Plug-In (Sun JVM) installed and enabled in their Windows’ Internet Explorer (IE) can use the CryptoMail Service.

Nevertheless, some people are confused with the check box, because of some of them are not familiar with the terminology and some of them are not aware of the issue with the Java Virtual Machine.  People are mistaken checked and/or unchecked the check box, while they should not.  We apologize for the confusion and the inconvenience.

By default, the IE uses the Microsoft’s Java Virtual Machine (MS JVM) to load a CAB or JAR file, while the IE with the Sun JVM require users to load a JAR file.  CAB and JAR are file formats that compress a set of Java file into single files.  The main difference that concerns with the client is the digitally signing technique that being used in those two formats.  To make the client secured, our service must load a CAB file or a JAR file according to your IE’s JVM setting.  For more information, you can read MSDN, Periodicals 1998, "From CAB to JAR: A Utility for Converting Cabinet Files into Java Archives."

To fix this problem, we redesign our website to handle detection of the JVM setting in your IE.  The method that we used is by loading a small Java Applet and having a JavaScript to call a function in the Applet.  Regardless with which of the Java Virtual Machine that you are using, all features of the CryptoMail Client and Service are remaining the same.