Re: V5 key packet format requirements

[Konrad Rosenbaum <[e-mail]>]

On Friday 03 February 2006 17:43, Ian G wrote:
> Ben Laurie wrote:
> > This could be confusing - documents that were signed with a key
> > specified like this could retroactively find themselves predating the
> > key.
>
> Why is this important?  The date on the key is
> just "there" and isn't of such strength that it
> should be stressed overly much.

Consequently one would also need to scrap the logic that a signature is 
invalid if it predates the key (that's somewhere in RFC2440).



Why not: hash the _complete_ public key packet _as_is_ without any 
modifications? 

The computational load of hashing a few bytes more and of slicing them first 
should be about identical.

It is very easy to implement (read as: less potential security holes through 
programming mistakes and higher interoperability).

It is much more resistant against upcoming attacks than a selective model.



	Konrad