On 11/27/18 3:47 PM, Alice Wonder wrote:
I actually went for a more complex scenario, I've created my own CA complete with CRL.
OK. That means fewer certificates for your peers to install over time, but is otherwise no better than self-signed.
It's nice because with S/MIME you really want two certs - one for signing (where ecdsa can be used) and one for when you need to receive encrypted.
IIRC, an S/MIME client should be able to install your public cert and encrypt messages sent to you with no user interaction. With Thunderbird, if I reply to a signed message, I can encrypt the reply. From a usability standpoint, I really want to have just one certificate. The easier it is to send me encrypted messages, the more likely it is that messages will be secure.
Web browsers are applications that exist for the explicit purpose of downloading and executing untrusted code. It does not seem like that is a very wise environment to use for generating long term cryptography keys. It really doesn't.
On the other hand, if you don't trust your browser's cryptography implementation, you definitely should not be using your browser for secure communication (https).