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Re: Primary subkey subpacket

David Shaw <dshaw@jabberwocky.com> Wed, 14 August 2002 17:12 UTC

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Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 13:05:53 -0400
From: David Shaw <dshaw@jabberwocky.com>
To: ietf-openpgp@imc.org
Subject: Re: Primary subkey subpacket
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On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 09:14:56AM +0200, Werner Koch wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 13 Aug 2002 23:58:44 +0200, Timo Schulz said:
> 
> > Recently I stumbled over a problems with multiple subkeys. I know
> > PGP doesn't let the user choose the key at all and GPG uses the
> > newest key by default. What about a "primary subkey" subpacket
> 
> I don't think this is needed.  If a subkey is published a sending
> implementation may choose any of the valid subkeys for encryption.
> Although not specified in OpenPGP, it should select the newest one as
> long as it has no creation date in the future.

I imagine a primary subkey flag as more of a tie-breaker.  If an
implementation wanted to ignore the flag (whether for PFS or other
reasons), that would be fine.  If the implementation did not care, or
could not reach a decision, the primary subkey would be chosen.

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  dshaw@jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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