Subject: Rechartering the OpenPGP WG

From: Derek Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:45:39 -0500

Happy New Year everyone.

At the IETF in Vancouver last month Sam Hartman said that he'd
welcome a rechartering discussion to allow us to continue to
work.  So before I start writing up a charter and milestones,
please pipe up if:

1) You are working on a draft that you think should be in the WG
2) You are thinking of working on a draft in the near future
   that you think should be in the WG
3) You have a working item topic that you'd like the WG to handle
   but you're not working on a draft yet but would like to get
   someone to work on.

Obviously #1 and #2 take significant precedence over #3.  In
addition, please provide time estimates for how much work
you suspect the draft will take (so we can set up appropriate
WG milestones).

Please respond in the next week so I can collect the responses
and work on an updated WG Charter.

NOTE:  If you do not respond then your idea will not be included
in the charter.  If I hear nothing then the WG will just be closed,
which means you'll actually need to physically attend IETFs
to get a new WG chartered.

I look forward to hearing from you.

-derek, your friendly neighborhood working group chair
-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       [email-masked]             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant

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From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:49:09 +0100

I'm interested in seeing the OpenPGP mail header draft published, but we
need help to finish it.  I recall that there were some comments on the
ABNF schema and I don't have the ABNF expertize or time available to
look into it.  What's missing is properly specifying the OpenPGP: header
to be compatible with RFC 2822 style ABNF in particular wrt proper
whitespace handling.  The current draft is at:

http://josefsson.org/openpgp-header/

The other open issue is PGP/MIME vs inline PGP "supports" header.  The
earlier discussion wasn't productive, and my conclusion was that there
is no consensus on how PGP signed e-mail should look like that is worth
writing into the document.  I strongly think that supporting anything
but PGP/MIME is broken, but others seems to have equally strong opposite
opinions.  I would suggest to drop this part of the specification, it is
only mentioned as an open issue right now.

/Simon

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From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:05:09 -0500

> and work on an updated WG Charter.

I have the Camellia draft (new one coming in a few days - thanks to
everyone for all the comments), and Len Sassaman mentioned Whirlpool.
If the charter can be written that way, I think a good addition would
be a general statement about adding (or rejecting) new algorithms as
they come up.

David

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From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:44:43 -0800

> and work on an updated WG Charter.

Here's some things I think should be put on the table:

* PFS
* New symmetric ciphers, e.g. Camillia
* Elliptic Curve / Suite B Crypto
* AHS support
* Exotic Signatures (Dan Nagy mentioned this)
* Extended Fingerprints
* OpenPGP/MIME improvements

I'm sure there are others I may have forgotten. Not being on that list  
doesn't mean that I think it should be excluded. Also, being on that  
list only means we will discuss or create drafts. We might decide that  
discussion doesn't get to a draft, or draft doesn't get to RFC. If  
something isn't in the charter, we won't discuss it. So being in the  
charter only means a willingness to discuss.

	Jon

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From: Rodney Thayer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:42:42 -0800

> * OpenPGP/MIME improvements

Something on the order of that list, I agree.  P.s. for those
who care we had a discussion about Elliptic Curve over on the openssl
list recently.  The point being I agree with the work item and I think
others would too.

> charter only means a willingness to discuss.

concur...

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From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:09:31 -0500

> charter only means a willingness to discuss.

Indeed, and in that light, I'd like to add to the list:

* V5 keys
* Changing/adding to the default / MUST-implement symmetric cipher
* Changing/adding to the default / MUST-implement hash algorithm

V5 keys might be the easiest way to get extended fingerprints or a
different default cipher, as it neatly removes the
backwards-compatibility issues.  This is true even if V5 is defined as
identical to V4 except for the version number.

David

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From: Len Sassaman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:09:11 -0800 (PST)

> be a general statement about adding (or rejecting) new algorithms as

Yep, I'm working on the Whirlpool draft; I've been held up with some
conference submissions, etc., but having a line-item for possible new
hashs considered would be nice.

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From: Len Sassaman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:10:46 -0800 (PST)

> identical to V4 except for the version number.

It would be nice if we had fingerprints read from left-right for the hash
of the key; this was apparently the original intention in PGP 3, and
someone got the direction wrong. ;)

(So if we're redefining fingerprints for v5, and could fix this with
minimum of fuss, it would be nice.)

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From: Ian G <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 01:30:33 +0100

>    but you're not working on a draft yet but would like to get

Following is an unfinished list I started when this thread 
popped up a few months back:

     * picking a future SHA?  SHA3?
     * message digest agility?

     * simplification of packets
     * deprecation of old modes

     * Certificate Authority signing
     * revocation over signature
     * distribution of revocation
       (one keyservers, all?, CRLs, blocks)

     * Keyring standard data layout
     * message concatonation (RW + BL)

     * stream cipher mode (Dani)

It might at least jog someone's memory, apologies as I don't 
have the time to think about it right now.

iang