Cryptography in Electronic Mail

Electronic Mail (email) is a very important method of communicating across the Internet, but the protocols used to handle emails during transmission, downloads, and organizational processes are not secure. Spammers and scammers misuse these protocols to propagate spam or scams across the Internet for advertising purposes or to gain access to critical data, such as credit card information. Cryptographic approaches are applied as a tool to help in securing email components, such as the header, data, etc. This chapter classifies the approaches used according to the protection mechanisms provided to the email components, and it also briefly describes these approaches. Because scammers are continually trying to crack current algorithms, the most recent improvements in email security using cryptography are covered in this discussion. An explanation is given as to the need for verifying both receivers and senders in this process. Finally, the authors examine how the use of these approaches will work in IPv6 as compared to IPv4.