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[openpgp] Re: OpenPGP grammar concerns (fwd: [Peter Gutmann] Re: [oss-security] Retrospective by 'gpg.fail' authors)

Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> Mon, 05 October 2026 14:17 UTC

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From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>
To: openpgp@ietf.org
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Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:31:26 -0400
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Subject: [openpgp] Re: OpenPGP grammar concerns (fwd: [Peter Gutmann] Re: [oss-security] Retrospective by 'gpg.fail' authors)
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Hi all--

I'm happy to see some concrete proposals for a constrained grammar, and
that these recent ones are (i think) roughly aligned with each other and
with what Paul posted a few years back as well.  There are some corner
cases to iron out, but this gives me some amount of hope that the WG
could potentially agree on a tighter grammar.

I'd like to remind folks writing proposals for a tightened grammar to
also expressly include in your description whatever explicit constraints
on "unwrapping" an SEIPD packet (or a compression packet, if you think
the minimal grammar should support it) that you think are appropriate.

When we were working on what eventually became 9580, i was struck by how
tempting it was to live in the rarified world of ABNF, which
conveniently doesn't (can't?) express the unwrapping step. don't fall
into that trap!

     --dkg

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