RFC 1040 · UNKNOWN · 1988

Privacy enhancement for Internet electronic mail: Part I: Message encipherment and authentication procedures

Overview

RFC 1040, “Privacy enhancement for Internet electronic mail: Part I: Message encipherment and authentication procedures”, is an Unknown document published in January 1988 by J. Linn. It obsoletes RFC 989. It has been obsoleted by RFC 1113 — refer to the newer document for the authoritative version. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.

Abstract

This RFC is the Outgrowth of a series of IAB Privacy Task Force meetings and of internal working papers distributed for those meetings. This memo defines message encipherment and authentication procedures, as the initial phase of an effort to provide privacy enhancement services for electronic mail transfer in the Internet. Detailed key management mechanisms to support these procedures will be defined in a subsequent RFC. As a goal of this initial phase, it is intended that the procedures defined here be compatible with a wide range of key management approaches, including both conventional (symmetric) and public-key (asymmetric) approaches for encryption of data encrypting keys. Use of conventional cryptography for message text encryption and/or integrity check computation is anticipated.

Abstract as published in the RFC, via rfc-editor.org.

What “Unknown” means

The standards-track status of this early RFC was never formally classified.

Read this RFC

The canonical text of RFC 1040 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.

Relationships to other RFCs
This RFC obsoletes
RFC 989
Obsoleted by
RFC 1113
Other RFCs from 1988

Who Is Online

In total there are 39 users online: 0 registered, 33 guests and 6 bots.

Most users ever online was 1,226 on 13 Jun 2026, 3:56 am.

Bots: AhrefsBot Applebot Bingbot Other Bot SemrushBot Sogou

Users active in the past 15 minutes. Total registered members: 354