Subject: Glitch in section 3.2

From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: 02 May 2001 18:33:46 +0200

From the current draft:

| 3.2. Multi-Precision Integers

|    The length field of an MPI describes the length starting from its
|    most significant non-zero bit. Thus, the MPI [00 02 01] is not
|    formed correctly. It should be [00 01 01].

I think it's worthwhile to point out that MPIs with an arbitrary
number of leading zeroes might legitimately occur inside V3 secret key
packets.  Perhaps it's even necessary to amend section 5.5.3 to
clarify this issue (i.e. that leading zeroes MUST NOT be stripped in
this case).

Well, maybe it's a good idea to stress already in section 3.2 that
implementations must be able to handle overlong MPI values
transparently.

(As you might guess, there's at least one implementations which gets
this wrong. ;-)

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  [email-masked]
University of Stuttgart           http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/
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From: Werner Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 19:29:14 +0200

> packets.  Perhaps it's even necessary to amend section 5.5.3 to

I don't think we should bloat the RFC with hints on how to implement
stuff needed for legacy keys.  OpenPGP is already large enough.

> (As you might guess, there's at least one implementations which gets

At least the last versions of GnuPG got it wrong.

  Werner

-- 
Werner Koch        Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
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From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: 02 May 2001 21:20:33 +0200

> stuff needed for legacy keys.  OpenPGP is already large enough.

I don't think V3 keys are legacy, at least not before the expiration
date protocol error is addressed in some way.