Re: [openpgp] saltpack on OpenPGP message format problems

[Derek Atkins <[e-mail]>]

Peter,

Peter Gutmann <[e-mail]> writes:

> Werner Koch <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>>How do you want to paste binary data into a contact web form or a Git commit
>>message?  The OpenPGP Armor makes this really easy and, fwiw, X.509 uses a
>>similar armoring technique.
>
> I dunno because that's not my area of expertise, but somehow every other
> software mechanism in existence has managed to get by without needing its own
> custom "ASCII armoring" (is there anything other than PGP that does this?), so
> I'm guessing it's a solved problem.

The only thing custom about PGP's ASCII Armor is the extra CRC.  I agree
that can probably be dropped, except of course there's the
backwards-compatibility issue.  As others have mentioned, there are
definitely reasons to keep *an* ascii armor format, especially for
key/certificate transit (ala an x509 csr/crt submission/retrieval).

>>Regarding PGP/MIME, it might be worth to consider dropping the need for the
>>ASCII armor in favor of standard MIME encoding.  This would also help to sort
>>out faulty PGP/MIME implementations.
>
> That would certainly help with usability, since 99.9% of the time it's
> completely redundant and better handled through other mechanisms.

For messages I agree, it's redundant in most current situations.

> Peter.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       [e-mail]             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant