Subject: Whither comment packets?

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 12:44:49 -0400

Hi everyone,

I understand that at some point in the past one of the OpenPGP drafts
had a "comment packet" defined.  It seems to have been dropped
somewhere along the way, and I was wondering if anyone recalled why?

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  [email-masked]  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
      We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson

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From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 10:12:28 -0700

> somewhere along the way, and I was wondering if anyone recalled why?

Yes, it was seen to be a security problem. An evil implementation could leak
things (like your keys) there, or use it as a way to do key-size reduction.
The area directors were forceful and persuasive in their arguments.

    Jon

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From: Werner Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 19:53:04 +0200

> things (like your keys) there, or use it as a way to do key-size reduction.

Not very convincing; I'd put it into the unhashed area of signature
packets ;-)

  Werner

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From: Adam Back <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 19:57:12 +0100

I don't find it makes a lot of sense either.

Key size reduction is anyway easy to do whatever the packet formats --
from the cryptography directly: generate weak key-pairs, or weak
symmetric keys, or trap-door weak keys (weak if you know some secret
strong otherwise) etc.  There have been a number of papers about how
to do this and how to do it well.

Adam