Re: [Exim] TLS & OE

On Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 06:34:58PM +0400, Michael Rozentsvayg wrote:
>
> Has anybody dealth with MS Outlook Express support TLS?

There are two ways for a SMTP server to support SMTP over TLS. The
"old" was is to immediately start up TLS as soon as the client and
server establish a TCP connection (even before the server displays the
SMTP banner). This required running the SMTP/TLS service on a
separate port from the standard SMTP port (much like HTTPS is on port
443 and HTTP traffic is on port 80).

The "new" way to support SMTP over TLS is to delay TLS initialization
until the client first issues a EHLO command, sees from the server's
response that it supports TLS, and then issues a STARTTLS command.

Exim only natively supports the "new" method. You can use a tool like
stunnel to support the "old" method, however you have to do some
hacking on the config files to support everything that Exim's native
SMTP/TLS will do.

Outlook introduced support for STARTTLS somewhere around the Outlook
2000 timeframe. I don't know when for sure that Outlook Express got
it.

Jeff