Subject: OpenPGP at IETF-59 Draft Minutes #1

From: Derek Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 21:16:10 -0500

Enclosed please find the the draft minutes of the OpenPGP meeting at
IETF-59.  Please comment if there are any errors or ommisions.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       [email-masked]             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant

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From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 09:10:24 -0500

On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 09:16:10PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:

> * IDEA in the v3-v4 algorithm conflict:  Major issue the question of what
> support needs to be given to PGP 2 implementations.  No proposed text was
> presented so issue was punted back to the author.

This one was mine.  The problem I had was the draft suggests using
IDEA when encrypting to a mix of V3 and V4 keys.

Section 12.1 of the draft says:

   An implementation that is striving for backward compatibility MAY
   consider a V3 key with a V3 self-signature to be an implicit
   preference for IDEA, and no ability to do TripleDES. This is
   technically non-compliant, but an implementation MAY violate the
   above rule in this case only and use IDEA to encrypt the message,
   provided that the message creator is warned. Ideally, though, the
   implementation would follow the rule by actually generating two
   messages, because it is possible that the OpenPGP user's
   implementation does not have IDEA, and thus could not read the
   message. Consequently, an implementation MAY, but SHOULD NOT use
   IDEA in an algorithm conflict with a V3 key.

It's a reasonable suggestion on the face of it, but it is insufficient
in practice.

Without going into all the messy details, a V3 program is going to
reject any message that doesn't use only RFC-1991 packets and packet
constructions, the IDEA cipher, a session key from a RSA key that is
less than 2112 bits, etc.

Proposed text to fix this is to add to the end of the paragraph:

  Note that when assembling a backwards compatible message, there may
  be other issues that be resolved in addition to using the IDEA
  cipher.

I'd also be fine with dropping the paragraph altogether if there is
not much interest in supporting PGP 2.

David

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From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 09:34:46 -0500

> not much interest in supporting PGP 2.

Or, it should be said - I'm also fine with doing nothing.  2440bis is
not a programming guide, and this is hardly a world-shatteringly
important issue.

David

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From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 17:00:44 +0100

> not much interest in supporting PGP 2.

I'm all in favor of ignoring PGP 2 completely.

Keep in mind that PGP 2 is unsupported software with known security
flaws and rather unclear licensing conditions.

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From: Ian Grigg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:59:52 -0500

> I'm all in favor of ignoring PGP 2 completely.

Gets my vote as well.

> flaws and rather unclear licensing conditions.

Also, small user base, and rather
expensive development ramifications.

PGP 2 was good when it was good, but
I think it's time to move on.

iang