PGP message format documentation needed
Paul Rubin
2440? E.g., was 2440 superseded by a later RFC?
I'm trying to read RFC 2440 and some parts of it are not very clear,
and some parts may need updating.
Examples:
1. Packet lengths are 4 bytes long, i.e. 4 gigabyte maximum (or 2 GB?
Is it signed or unsigned?). So if you want to encrypt a 100 GB hard
disk backup, are you stuck? Or can you divide the file into 25
"partial packets"?
2. Section 5.1 says there's a 1-byte number specifying the public key
algorithm. It mentions the RSA and El-Gamal algorithms but doesn't
say what values of the 1-byte number correspond to those algorithms.
There might be more issues like this but I stopped reading RFC2440
at this point.
I guess I can find these things out by examining the C source code but
I first thought I'd ask if there's a more recent document.
Thanks.
disa...@saiknes.lv.no.spam.net
Hash: RIPEMD160
Paul Rubin wrote:
>
> Is there any more recent documentation of PGP message format than RFC
> 2440? E.g., was 2440 superseded by a later RFC?
no, but there is a draft:
http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis
> I'm trying to read RFC 2440 and some parts of it are not very clear,
> and some parts may need updating.
>
> Examples:
>
> 1. Packet lengths are 4 bytes long, i.e. 4 gigabyte maximum (or 2 GB?
> Is it signed or unsigned?). So if you want to encrypt a 100 GB hard
> disk backup, are you stuck? Or can you divide the file into 25
> "partial packets"?
you'll need at least 100 parial packets,
max size of partial packet is 1GB,
see section 4.2.2.4.
> 2. Section 5.1 says there's a 1-byte number specifying the public key
> algorithm. It mentions the RSA and El-Gamal algorithms but doesn't
> say what values of the 1-byte number correspond to those algorithms.
section 9.1 says it.
> There might be more issues like this but I stopped reading RFC2440
> at this point.
>
> I guess I can find these things out by examining the C source code but
> I first thought I'd ask if there's a more recent document.
> Thanks.
__
Disastry http://disastry.dhs.org/
http://disastry.dhs.org/pgp <----PGP plugins for Netscape and MDaemon
^----PGP 2.6.3ia-multi06 (supports IDEA, CAST5, BLOWFISH, TWOFISH,
AES, 3DES ciphers and MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA2 hashes)
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Thomas J. Boschloo
> Paul Rubin wrote:
> >
> > Is there any more recent documentation of PGP message format than RFC
> > 2440? E.g., was 2440 superseded by a later RFC?
>
> no, but there is a draft:
> http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis
<http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis-05.txt>
seems more current. And I would also check <www.openpgp.org> because
they make the specs. At first glance I see NAI and Wave Systems
something, aren't they supposed to be evil?? (Wave somehow reminds me of
paladium and DRM, but I could be confusing myself).
Greetz,
Thomas
--
Alec Empire: "Anything worth having is worth fighting for"
My boring homepage <http://home.hccnet.nl/t.j.boschloo/>
Paul Rubin
> > > Is there any more recent documentation of PGP message format than RFC
> > > 2440? E.g., was 2440 superseded by a later RFC?
> >
> > no, but there is a draft:
> > http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis
>
> <http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis-05.txt>
> seems more current. And I would also check <www.openpgp.org> because
> they make the specs. At first glance I see NAI and Wave Systems
> something, aren't they supposed to be evil?? (Wave somehow reminds me of
> paladium and DRM, but I could be confusing myself).
Thanks. Section 9 had the stuff I wanted. There should have been a
pointer in section 4, so it was just poor editing, not that big a deal.
disa...@saiknes.lv.no.spam.net
Hash: RIPEMD160
"Thomas J. Boschloo" wrote:
>
> disastry wrote:
> > http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis
>
> <http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis-05.txt>
> seems more current.
> Thomas
:-D
they are the same ;->
__
Disastry http://disastry.dhs.org/
http://disastry.dhs.org/pgp <----PGP plugins for Netscape and MDaemon
^----PGP 2.6.3ia-multi06 (supports IDEA, CAST5, BLOWFISH, TWOFISH,
AES, 3DES ciphers and MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA2 hashes)
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