Re: [openpgp] PKI (RFC 5480) mapping to ECC keys (RFC 6637)

[Paul Wouters <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2013, Andrey Jivsov wrote:

>> You can't use 20 because it was used for Elgamal in rfc2440.  A new one
>> needs to be allocated.  22 would be the next.

Indeed.

> I was thinking about recycling ID 20, given that there is small benefit for 
> the IDs to be consecutive.
>
> The simplification is generic. Now that we would have 3 IDs for ECC, it is 
> more efficient to check 18 <= x <= 20 then for 3 arbitrary IDs. Also, 
> consecutive IDs allow easy transition to zero-based indexing (just subtract 
> 18).

Those "benefits" are just coding errors waiting to happen in the future. A
switch statement seems much more appropriate.

> Current definition of 20 in RFC 4880 is:
>
>   20         - Reserved (formerly Elgamal Encrypt or Sign)
>
> In RFC 2440 it is:
>
>   20         - Elgamal (Encrypt or Sign)
>
> Do we know of at least one case when 20 is used in deployed applications? 
> This will be enough to require 22 for ECDSA+ECDH.

Even with no implementation out there, the allocated numbers should not be
recycled, unless in extreme use cases, eg where we've ran out of
numbers.

Paul