An OpenSSL patch has been developed at the direction of the Coordination Center that supports EAI in electronic signature certificates, which will allow sending cryptographically protected messages from emails of this type. The patch complies with the RFC 8398 specification “Internationalized Email Addresses in X.509 Certificates.”
Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev noted that the specifications for emails in national languages were developed long ago, but it was necessary to standardize several protocols connected with old formats in order to use the addresses like regular ones.
“There is usually a wait after the development of new standards, which can sometimes take several years until these standards can be used in practice. We are happy that the efforts of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ helped reduce this period and move towards digital equality. This work was done as part of our cooperation with the Universal Acceptance project and the UASG Working Group. The project mission is to see that all domain names and emails suit all systems, which means they must be seen as valid, saved, processed and shown correctly,” Andrey Vorobyev said.
The patch’s creator, leading Cryptocom developer, Dmitry Belyavsky, described his work: “OpenSSL is a leading cryptographic tool, the architecture of which is well-suited for further work. I am one of the 16 OpenSSL committers all over the world, and I chose this tool to implement this new standard. I would like to mention the support from the Coordination Center and the specification’s creators; without it, this project would have taken much more time.”
The patch and details on the project are available at the Coordination Center’s website.
