unable to download get-iplayer

[Alex Brooks]

Hello,

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 9:41 AM, SquarePenguin
<getiplayer at squarepenguin.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 08:47:20 +0100
> CJB <chrisjbrady at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> More to the point what was that file attached to your post?
>>
>> smime.7ps
>>
>> ????? CJB
>
> It's a cryptographic signature showing that the email has been
> cryptographically signed by David's private key, which you can then
> 'test' using his public key to make sure that he (the owner of the
> private key specifically) was the one that signed (and therefore likely
> sent) that message.
>
> At least, that's how it would work for the GPG version of this tech.
>
> I think this particular implementation David is using might be a little
> different to the way GPG does it but it does the same sort of thing.
>
> In short, it's nothing nefarious, it's actually used to make email more
> trustworthy in that it lets you know he sent it and not someone
> pretending to be him.
>
>

Yes, the standard is called S/MIME, and it is a proper standard under
RFCs 3369, 3370, 3850 and 3851, a decent summary is on Wikipedia at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME.

The vast majority of actual email clients automatically support the
standard in the normal application without plugins (and will verify a
digitally signed message such as this), even console mail clients like
Alpine, right through to full fat propriety stuff like Outlook.
Unfortunately, most main webmail clients like GMail and Outlook.com do
not support S/MIME without either a plugin or paying for the
subscription version.

The main practical difference between PGP/GPG and S/MIME is that
S/MIME uses certificates issued by a Certificate Authority (like with
HTTPS etc), whereas PGP/GPG uses self issued certificates you get
countersigned by your mate at the pub or anyone you can pursuage at
some convention you attend.  The age old argument of who we trust more
comes into play here.

Alex