Subject: Closing the openpgp working group

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:30:31 -0500

Hi, folks.  Back in January Derek started a thread on a new charter.
That never really came to any conclusion.  I had given Derek a
deadline to produce a charter that is well past.  So, I'm going to
close the openpgp working group.

If people ever do get a concrete proposal together, please don't
hesitate to contact the security ADs at the time this happens and
propose a new working group.

---

From: "Arturo 'Buanzo' Busleiman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:53:24 -0200

Sam Hartman wrote:
| If people ever do get a concrete proposal together, please don't
| hesitate to contact the security ADs at the time this happens and
| propose a new working group.

Ouch. Well, I guess the HTTP Working Group would be the ideal place for me to continue my
involvement with the IETF regarding OpenPGP for HTTP?

- --
Arturo "Buanzo" Busleiman
Reliable inter-continental Mail Relay Service - Ask me!
Independent Security Consultant - SANS - OISSG
http://www.buanzo.com.ar/pro/

---

From: Derek Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:10:05 -0500

Sam,

> propose a new working group.

The fact that it didn't come to conclusion is just a result of
my not driving the process enough.  There's clearly work that
people want to get done, including active development in:

  ECC
  v5 Keys
  OpenPGP in TLS

Indeed, we've had lots of discussion in the past couple weeks.

Sam, you did give me until the end of January and it's now March.
Clearly I'm just not on the ball here, but I do think there's
enough work to warrant keeping the group open.

Can I get one more week to come up with a proposed charter?

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       [email-masked]             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant

---

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 17:21:26 -0500

> involvement with the IETF regarding OpenPGP for HTTP?

This doesn't mean the mailing list is going away.  Just that the WG
status is.  If and when we are ready, we can try and charter a new
group.  We have three things that are being discussed right now (ECC,
Camellia and Whirlpool).  I'd say the Camellia draft is basically
ready to go once we handle the charter.

David

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:29:49 -0500

>>>>> "Arturo" == Arturo 'Buanzo' Busleiman <[email-masked]> writes:

    Arturo> Sam Hartman wrote:
    Arturo> | If people ever do get a concrete proposal together, please don't
    Arturo> | hesitate to contact the security ADs at the time this happens and
    Arturo> | propose a new working group.

    Arturo> Ouch. Well, I guess the HTTP Working Group would be the ideal place for me to continue my
    Arturo> involvement with the IETF regarding OpenPGP for HTTP?

OpenPGP for HTTP is out of scope in both the HTTP and OpenPGP charters
as they existed before I closed the OpenPGP working group.  You would
need a new group either way.

---

From: "Arturo 'Buanzo' Busleiman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:32:40 -0200

Sam Hartman wrote:
| OpenPGP for HTTP is out of scope in both the HTTP and OpenPGP charters
| as they existed before I closed the OpenPGP working group.  You would
| need a new group either way.

Sounds like good advice. Thanks Sam.

PS: Totally OFFTOPIC. I'll arrive to Las Vegas tomorrow Friday 7th, 6pm (Las V. time). Anyone
attending 2600 Meeting there PLEASE contact me. Or if any of you is into security, I'll also stay in
charlotte March 10-16.

- --

---

From: Ian G <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:18:13 +0100

> propose a new working group.

If this has indeed happened, I guess the next step is 
creating enough momentum for V5 key structure.

How much enthusiasm is there for this?  Enough to generate 
some consensus?  Is there a business case for a redesign? 
How much are groups going to invest into OpenPGP in the 
future, and how much would they save if a redesign cleaned 
things up?

If the answer is in the positive, I'd suggest putting in 
place a wiki somewhere.  We need some way of working on the 
various parts in parallel.

iang

---

From: "David Crick" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:12:03 +0000

>  some consensus?  Is there a business case for a redesign?

"doesn't use SHA1" sounds like a good V5 business case....

---

From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:26:32 +0100

> "doesn't use SHA1" sounds like a good V5 business case....

Yes, some of us do check-list based security, and not having to rely on
SHA-1 is helpful in this area.

---

From: [email-masked] (Daniel A. Nagy)
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:02:56 +0100

> SHA-1 is helpful in this area.

And while we are at it, I would suggest to express V5 fingerprints (as well
as key IDs) either in octal or in decimal. This is not a cryptography issue
(*), but a usability issue on (typically mobile) devices with numeric-only
keypads. As an added benefit, it would make the keyID ~ telephone number
metaphor more sustainable.

For such a decision, OpenPGP could earn the ethernal gratitude of the entire
telecom industry.

-- 
Daniel

(*) But it certainly IS a security issue: usability is a crucial part of
security, because security measures that are not usable are not going to be
used.

---

From: Ian G <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:15:24 +0100

> For such a decision, OpenPGP could earn the ethernal gratitude of the entire

I cautiously agree with this.

The old idea of hex and base64 was about saving bits and 
aligning with the soul of the computer.  Those ideas are 
anachronisms with modern capacities, and with modern users.

(Also, in both SSH and PGP, we have seen difficulties with 
key identification ... with different varieties of 
expression being incompatible.  This failure has slowed down 
and probably killed the ability to check public keys easily, 
a major tenet of opportunistic cryptography.)

So it would be nice to create one unified way.  Something 
like, all key Ids are expressed as parts of ordinary base-10 
numbers of the formal SHA-512 hash of the key.  The key Id 
is always read from the left side of the full hash.  If you 
want more discrimination you read off more digits.  The size 
of the number tells you the discrimination.

("something like" being a thought experiment, not a serious 
suggestion to start coding ;)

iang

---

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:41:05 -0400

> For such a decision, OpenPGP could earn the ethernal gratitude of the entire

The current hex method is nicely dense: 8 characters gives you 32
bits, which is enough (today, anyway) to find and disambiguate keys in
virtually all cases (once the key is found, of course, we have the
64-bit key ID).  If you are restricted to the numbers 0-9, those 8
characters only give you a bit more than 26 bits, so there would be a
greater chance of collision.  You'd need to go to a 10-digit decimal
key ID to cover the same space as the 8 character hex ID.  10
characters isn't too bad.

It would be interesting to write a test against the keyservers to see
how much of an issue this really is.  It would also be interesting to
see if someone (the phone companies?)  has done a study on how many
digits people can easily remember.

As it happens, my key id is all decimals anyway...

David

---

From: John Clizbe <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:11:11 -0500

David Shaw wrote:
> It would also be interesting to see if someone (the phone companies?) has done
> a study on how many digits people can easily remember.

Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits
on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/

7 +/- 2

There's a Wikipedia discussion of it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

---

From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:26:03 -0700

> For such a decision, OpenPGP could earn the ethernal gratitude of  

I think we should not tie non SHA-1 fingerprints to V5 key ids.

I like the proposal someone had at one point that you have a syntax  
that includes the hash number. Thus, a present fingerprint would become:

2:012356789ABCDEF...

A SHA-256 version would be:

8:FEDCBA987654.....

Within this, if you want a shorter version of the fingerprint, you  
simply truncate the right-most portion (which "fixes" the present  
mechanism).

Once you have this mechanism, a way to do a fingerprint in decimal or  
octal is pretty easy. It's also easy for telephones to map the ':' to  
a '*' (e.g.).

I leave the exact signal for a different radix as an exercise for  
someone to suggest.

	Jon