Subject: Status of RFC2440

From: Ian Grigg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:53:26 +0100

What is the status of the OpenPGP draft?

I've been asked to speak at an Identity
conference and while I was musing on the
unsuitability of x.509/PKI for identity,
it occurred to me that one of the barriers
is that OpenPGP is not a standard, whereas
x.509 is.

Institutions put great store on standards
(rightly or wrongly).  Also, the "PGP" name
is considered somewhat to be loony in many
staid quarters.  It would be thus doubly
good to have a completed spec, so that we
could say that a system conformed to RFC
2440, an internet identity architecture
standard.

(With all the normal marketing caveats of
course!)

iang

---

From: Werner Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 09:30:12 +0200

> What is the status of the OpenPGP draft?

IIRC, the latest draft has expired and is thus not anymore available
from the usual places.

> is that OpenPGP is not a standard, whereas

I just checked the rfc-index and both, OpenPGP (rfc2440) and X.509
PKIX profile (rfc3280), are in PROPOSED STANDARD status.  You don't
want to call plain ISO X.509 a practically useful standard without
specifying a profile.

We talked about moving to DRAFT status since mid 1999 with no result
though. Derek, any new plans on moving forward?

Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

---

From: Ian Grigg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 10:23:23 +0100

> want to call plain ISO X.509 a practically useful standard without

Me, I wouldn't call x.509 practically useful in
any contexts ;-)  But the point is that it has
the market, it has the support of all the major
players, whereas rfc2440 has not, and it has the
ISO label.  All of these things equate to "it's
a standard" without much drilling down into what
that means.

> though. Derek, any new plans on moving forward?

Yes, I don't understand it.  As I understand,
about a year ago it was feature frozen, and a
list of issues had to be cleaned up.

iang

---

From: Werner Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:55:47 +0200

> ISO label.  All of these things equate to "it's

With respect to email encryption OpenPGP is the standard protocol most
people want to go with because it is kown to work.  At least this is
what I hear from companies looking into ways to encrypt email. 

I only MS Outlook would allow to set the content-type explicitly - to
implement PGP/MIME - the remaining deployment problem would be
solvable.

Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

---

From: Ian Grigg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:38:04 +0100

> what I hear from companies looking into ways to encrypt email. 

Oh, indeed.  BTW, do you have any statistics on that?
It would be very useful to get some hard or soft
figures on it, because we continually come up against
people believe their own world is the only world.

But, my point is not about mail.  Mail is but one
application of OpenPGP.  Another is identity, and
a third is reputation.  Both of these are relatively
well served by the OpenPGP's web of trust, but they
are being ignored.  Meanwhile, a lot of companies
have been trying for years to do identity in x.509
and failing dismally because of the constraints in
that technology, and I don't think it is even
possible to do reputation in x.509.

> implement PGP/MIME - the remaining deployment problem would be

There's a lot wrong with Internet mail programs.  I
normally start with "why o why is there no button to
generate a self-signed x.509 key and start using it?"

But, to underscore my earlier point, mail is not where
it's at.  Traffic is moving to chat, and there is a
chance to re-engineer the comms architecture, as chat
is still an open market with competing protocols.  So
not being standard is not a draw back.  The only thing
of importance is whether it works and deploys quickly,
and OpenPGP has a much better chance of that than any
alternate.

iang

---

From: Werner Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 13:40:23 +0200

> Oh, indeed.  BTW, do you have any statistics on that?

Sorry no.  I have not seen that companies publically announce that
they now use encryption for their communication; probably because
everyone would expects that communication is held confidential.

> are being ignored.  Meanwhile, a lot of companies

There are no widely used applications to support OpenPGP for that.  I
know one TLS implementaion capable of using OpenPGP keys but the usual
web clients don't support it. 

It would be easy to use this with ssh and I expect to see it in the
near future.

> generate a self-signed x.509 key and start using it?"

Even worse: My jabber client complains about self-signed certificates
instead of displaying its fingerprint once for verification.

> chance to re-engineer the comms architecture, as chat

Although I don't like chat things very much, you are probably right.

Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

---

From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:02:35 -0700

> IIRC, the latest draft has expired and is thus not anymore available

Sorry. I just sent out my latest version as bis-12.

What's left, to my mind, is for me to go and fully deprecate V3 keys / 
MD5. When I last looked at open issues with Derek, I'd put in words for 
all issues anyone had where there was something actionable. After that, 
as far as I'm concerned, we can put this into real last call.

	Jon

---

From: Ian Grigg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:32:05 +0100

Jon,

Excellent news!  can you post a URL for us when it
is up there.  Thanks,

iang

> as far as I'm concerned, we can put this into real last call.

Yes, kill the V3.  Less is better.

iang

---

From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:33:24 -0700

> is that OpenPGP is not a standard, whereas

Huh? OpenPGP isn't a standard? How?

In the last couple of years there's been a resurgence of OpenPGP-based 
systems. I see new ones coming on line (usually in an email that says 
something like, "Is this a competitor of yours?") about at the rate of 
one every month or two, but I've gotten two of them this *week*. More 
than one of these new people have contributed here. If anything, 
OpenPGP is undergoing a renaissance right now. There are also other 
bits of ground breaking on further adoption that I can't talk about, 
but I can tell you that I don't see this pattern stopping.

My products support both OpenPGP and X.509, and my official policy is 
to be format agnostic. However, I'll say that while X.509 is a 
"standard" it is a "standard" that you often have to make work by doing 
passive fingerprinting on the certs. You look at it, infer what 
software or CA created it, and special case the handling of the crypto 
system accordingly. I'm not complaining, merely stating. For anyone who 
goes to the trouble of walking the minefield of X.509 interoperability, 
this "standard" is a huge barrier to entry to competition. Unlike 
OpenPGP, where someone can knock off an interoperable system with a 
little bit of work (hacking, if necessary your own previous systems and 
others like the Perl module) and end up with something that works, 
X.509 takes *work* to make interoperate, and this is a huge boon for 
anyone who actually makes a living at this.

Yes, yes, there are open source toolkits for X.509. I've used them. My 
conclusion was that those nice folks at GeoTrust provide a good service 
for the money, especially when I compute my own hourly rate and the 
fact that I could otherwise be doing something fun.

Be sure to tell them that, when you talk about the superiority of 
"standards" to mere RFCs. :-)

	Jon

---

From: Hironobu SUZUKI <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 11:01:04 +0900

I'd like to write my comments.

"X.509 is a standard". It is true because we have no any alternative
choice for CA service in OpenPGP. It is hard to make OpenPGP CA
service because there is no trust model with certificate authority in
OpenPGP.

Current version of "Web of Trust" is not effective for
trustworthiness. See "Web of Trust" in Debian project. It looks as
like "autograph please", "I have more autographs than you".

But "Web of Trust" model is very flexible way and it has potential to
make OpenPGP based CA model. I understand that OpenPGP based CA
service must be there also.

Please note that OpenPGP based CA service must be not only business
domain but also community domain. Organizations, companies, school,
class, projects and any size of community may have their own CA.  It
should be compared with "Student ID", "Member ID" and "Backstage
ID". It should not be compared with "Passport ID", "Nation ID" and
"Social ID". Fair identification is necessary for our life.

Today, X.509 with OpenPGP is practical solution but ultimate solution
is to make OpenPGP's "Web of Trust" model with certificate authority
for our community.  X.509 is OK but I'd would like to seek "something
new for OpenPGP".

I have a plan to make "Trusted Public Keyserver" that can provide
public keys that owner-allowed to open public. Many public keys in
public keyserver have garbage signatures and many OpenPGP users put
their "please use this" public key in their web site, not public
keyserver. OpenPKSD-TPK will be my answer. Finish this plan, I'd like
to design "Trust model with OpenPGP based CA" and to implement it.

I believe that the diversity is required to survive, is not the first
step to the chaos.

Regards,

--- 
Hironobu SUZUKI  (From Japan)
E-Mail: hironobu @ h2np.net
URL: http://h2np.net
URL: http://openpksd.org

---

From: Ian Grigg <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 15:54:15 +0100

> Huh? OpenPGP isn't a standard? How?

Specifically (bearing in mind the emphasis
outlined below on mindspace) we lack the completed
RFC.  That will be a big help.

> than one of these new people have contributed here. If anything, OpenPGP 
> is undergoing a renaissance right now. There are also other bits of 
> ground breaking on further adoption that I can't talk about, but I can 
> tell you that I don't see this pattern stopping.

Well that's encouraging news.  Is there any way
we can get a picture on how many ventures out there
are building RFC2440 systems?

That's an open question!  It would be nice
if there was a list or a forum of apps or a group
of people doing stuff.  (There is this group, which
is strictly standards focused, and the cryptorights
mailing list that I am aware of.)

> My products support both OpenPGP and X.509, and my official policy is to 
> be format agnostic. However, I'll say that while X.509 is a "standard" 
> it is a "standard" that you often have to make work by doing passive 
> fingerprinting on the certs. You look at it, infer what software or CA 
> created it, and special case the handling of the crypto system 
> accordingly. I'm not complaining, merely stating. For anyone who goes to 
> the trouble of walking the minefield of X.509 interoperability, this 
> "standard" is a huge barrier to entry to competition. Unlike OpenPGP, 
> where someone can knock off an interoperable system with a little bit of 
> work (hacking, if necessary your own previous systems and others like 
> the Perl module) and end up with something that works, X.509 takes 
> *work* to make interoperate, and this is a huge boon for anyone who 
> actually makes a living at this.

Everything you say makes sense.  But when I was
mentioning barriers to entry, I was specifically
thinking in terms of the institutional mindset.
x.509 to them is telecoms, ISO, Verisign, billion
dollar companies, and all the associated mindspace
and presence that goes with a standard.

Whereas OpenPGP is .. what?  A bunch of net geeks
mucking around with crypto mail.  When they're
not fighting the government they're fighting
each other...

In those terms, which are the terms that any
company over a thousand employees buys on, x.509
is a standard, and OpenPGP is a frontier toy.
These people have no capability to drill down
through the sales blurb into what the software
does, or the crypto does.  These are the people
who say "it is a standard if IBM says it is a
standard."

> for the money, especially when I compute my own hourly rate and the fact 
> that I could otherwise be doing something fun.
> 

Oh, don't get me wrong - my part is on how to
fix the broken x.509 models / how the RFC2440
model has delivered.  But I feel it is important
to try and work out why it is that these big buyers
simply don't see the alternates.  One of the
answers is their mindset that the x.509 thing
is a standard.  And there isn't any competition
to that mindspace.

Not yet.  Hence my suggestion that we start calling
it RFC2440 rather than OpenPGP.  (I'm throwing that
out there more to point people at the issues rather
than expecting it to be a valuable idea.)

iang

---

From: Derek Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 11:27:38 -0400

> RFC.  That will be a big help.

Uhh, define "completed RFC".  RFC2440 is completed, has been for
several years.  It's also an RFC.  It will always be an RFC.  RFC2440
will never change!  

<chair-hat>
There's the ongoing rfc2440bis work, which will hopefully complete
soon and get turned into a new RFC with a new RFC number and will
obsolete RFCs 1991 and 2440.  But that does not obviate the fact that
RFC 2440 is a published Proposed Standard on OpenPGP.
</chair-hat>

So, your statement that "OpenPGP is not a standard" is clearly
incorrect.

-derek

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

---

From: Konrad Rosenbaum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 12:08:34 +0200

> service because there is no trust model with certificate authority in

Actually, all the necessary flags are there:

section 5.2.3.12 Trust Signature  (can be used for sub-CA signature).

section 5/2.3.14 Revocation Key (necessary for some strictly hierachical CA 
models).

section 5.2.3.20 Key Flags:
0x01 - this key may be used to certify other keys (read: Sub-CA)
0x02/0x04/0x08 - this key may be used to sign/encrypt data (read: user key)
0x10 - key escrow (minefield warning: partly patented by PGP Inc.)
0x80 - group key

All that is left to do is:
* implement support for this model in OpenPGP aware products
* issue a list of trusted CAs (public keyring) suitable for your application

	Konrad