HIGH DENSITY MAIL PROTOCOL – HDMP
High Density Mail Protocol (HDMP) is a binary network protocol designed for
the exchange of e-mail messages among computers or other devices. This
protocol isn’t compatible with the current e-mail exchange standards SMTP
(Standard Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3), since
HDMP features a completely different structure which makes it extremely
efficient, fast and safe, eradicating the main causes for SPAM, phishing (ID
forgery) and ill-intentioned email.
Sending
User
Sending
Server
Intermediate
Servers
Receiving
Server
Receiving
User
Outstanding Features
High Speed to Send and Receive E-mails
- Data Compression: Depending on its content, this feature may reduce email size up to 10 times, which facilitates a measurable speed increase and
minimizes information traffic across the net. This compression always takes
place internally and automatically through the method “Normal Deflate 08”
(currently used in applications like WinZip). By contrast, the current e-mail
protocol (SMTP) requires that all binary data in the email be converted into
text format and encodes them using “Base64”, which results in a 30% size
increase!
- Low Hand-Shaking: HDMP requires very few steps to achieve client-server
communication and send or receive e-mails. Only 4 steps are necessary to
deliver an e-mail, in contrast to the 14 steps required by the current SMTP
standard. This speeds e-mail sending and reception.
- Unique Communication Port: Only one communication port is used to send
and receive e-mails. Thus both processes take place in only one connection
session, without having to connect and authenticate separately for each task
(as in SMTP/POP3 standards).
- Binary Protocol: HDMP uses data transmission in binary format instead of
using Text. At present, data transmission in Text format (as currently used
in SMTP) is unnecessary, since the user doesn’t intervene in the
communication by entering commands manually. The binary protocol
accelerates the transmissions because a great amount of unnecessary data
is eliminated. As an additional benefit, information theft is made more
difficult.
Information Protection
- Data Encryption: Activating this feature protects the content (text of the
message and attached file/s) through the use of encryption methods like
AES, 3DES, etc. The AES cipher is currently used by the FBI for “Top Secret”
level protection. The decryption can be External (provided by the receiving
user) or PDS (see below).
- Encryption and decryption code “PDS Security” (Persistent Digital
Signature). This code (512-bit PDS Signature) enables not only the user ID
verification, but also the protection of information through automatic
encryption. To achieve the automation of all these processes, the contact list
of the e-mail client application provides a special field that permits to store
this particular code for each contact.
User ID Protection
- Protection of Recipients’ Addresses: When an e-mail has more than one
recipient, they are all treated as BCC (Blind Carbon Copy). When sending the
e-mail to each recipient, the sending server removes all other recipients’
addresses, so that each recipient can only know “how many other people the
email was sent to” but not their e-mail addresses. This prevents address
theft due to indiscriminate address forwarding, which commonly occurs in
“e-mail chains”, for example.
- Safe User Authentication: User authentication to send or receive e-mails is
safely achieved by sending to the server a 64-byte MD5 code, instead of
having to send user name, access code and the domain it belongs to; this
prevents account theft and data interception by hackers.
Protection against SPAM and Phishing
- E-mail Trace Verification: When sending an e-mail via HDMP, this goes
through a series of servers till it gets to its final recipient; each intermediate
server doesn’t send the e-mail to the next server without verifying before
that the e-mail really comes from the preceding server. This reverse
connection takes place after the primary connection, which allows a
complete verification of the trace. Finally, if it is not possible to fulfill this
verification at any point of the e-mail trajectory, the e-mail is destroyed and
doesn’t get to the receiving user. This prevents the sending of SPAM using
software known as SPAM Pumps (software for massive SPAM forwarding).
- Sender ID: When sending an email via HDMP, the sending server adds the
information of the “sender’s e-mail” and “sender’s name”. This feature
prevents the user sending an e-mail from changing any of their data and
forging their identity; or if they did, they would leave a trace of their
accessing the server where they registered their account.
- PDS Identity (Persistent Digital Signature): The persistent digital signature
allows the ID validation of a sending user. This is so because every e-mail
has a field known as PDS Checksum which stores a 256-bit number created
from certain data from the email and the user’s PDS identity. The recipient
can verify this number (if they have the sender’s PDS Signature) and in this
way verify the authenticity of the received e-mail. If it comes to it the e-mail
client application can be configured to filter e-mails that don’t validate the
sender’s ID using the PDS; this would completely block unknown or illintentioned users.
- Nonexistent Open Mail Relay servers: Users who want to send an e-mail
must use the server where they opened their e-mail account since they will
have to validate their identity in it to send the e-mail. This feature prevents
servers from being used by third parties to send SPAM without having an
account in them.
- Client IP Record: When sending an e-mail, the sending server takes the IP
number of the sending user and attaches it to the e-mail. In this way the
recipient can know the sending user’s ID, thus providing another way to
know the e-mail’s origin and judge its validity.
- All these features prevent phishing as well as the most common sources of
SPAM, thus protecting the recipient.
Data Transmission Reliability
- Integrity Control through CRC-32: When sending or receiving e-mails via
HDMP, controls of data validity are made using the cyclic redundancy check
CRC-32. By contrast, the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) doesn’t
make any kind of integrity control.
Other features
- Multi-Body Capacity: E-mails can have more than one message body, a
feature similar to the “sheets” in Excel documents.
- Linked Attached Files: Attached files are always linked to a message body
in particular; this allows separating the file belonging to each body and
organizing more efficiently the information within the e-mail.
- XML E-mail Header: It enables fields like user card inlay with photo, e-mail
status, part sizes, digital signatures, etc.
PERSISTENT DIGITAL SIGNATURE - PDS
The PDS is a free digital signature that can be used for a user’s ID validation
and automatic data encryption or decryption. This signature is a hexadecimal
number of 64 characters in its complete version, or 44 characters in the
“identity only” version.
How it is Created
The required data for the creation of a Persistent Digital Signature are the
person’s full name, city of residence or birth, and a password (this password
is only used to create the signature); these are combined in a certain way
using algorithms like MD5, HMAC-SHA1 and CRC16 to generate the final
number.
Constitutive parts and nomenclatures
PDS Signature: Complete signature of 64 hexadecimal characters. It has a
Self Integrity Checksum.
Example: 3ba58abdae32ad0fc19a1801e2d9b9d12651304dfa5a19a7cccfa21206c92b7a
PDS Identity: It corresponds with the first 44 signature characters and
enables a user’s identification. This portion can be used in isolation from the
full PDS and has a self integrity checksum of the portion as well.
Example: 3ba58abdae32ad0fc19a1801e2d9b9d12651304dfa5a
PDS Security: it is found in the following 16 characters and functions as a
public key for information encryption or decryption. This portion can’t be
used in isolation from the full PDS.
Example: 19a7cccfa21206c9
Use of PDS in the HDMP Standard
The two main functions of the permanent digital signatures are implemented
in the e-mail protocol HDMP. This means that the user that receives an email has the sender’s ID authentication through PDS Identity, and e-mail
automatic decryption through PDS Security.
It is worth noting that in no case the Persistent Digital Signature or any of its
parts is directly attached to an e-mail or contact card, but it is simply used
locally to create a code known as PDS Checksum that is calculated using
several specific points of an e-mail and the digital signature itself. This
prevents signature theft through e-mail interception.
Created by David Jorge Aguirre Grazio
December 2007
www.hidens.com.ar