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Re: Thoughts on an OpenPGP header?



Werner Koch <wk@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:16:03 +0100, Simon Josefsson said:
>
>> could be retrieved, and 'gpg --import' is invoked on it.  Another is a
>> "Secure reply" button, that uses the Key ID information in the header,
>> to make a signed/encrypted reply to a message.
>
> I don't think that this is a good idea.  Mutt should default to an
> encrypted reply if a encrypted message is replied to.  The keyID to
> encrypt to may then be taken either from the signature of the message
> (most messages are encrypted and signed) or from the list of
> recipients the orginal mssage has been encrypted too.  The latter
> poses a security problem because an attacker might have added an
> additional recipient with a random session ID.

Agreed.  I was talking about messages that are not signed nor
encrypted, like this one.

Conceptually, one could treat the presence of an OpenPGP: header to
mean that the sender support PGP/MIME.

> The PGP header is still useful as a hint on where to get an updated
> key for non-signed messages in case of keyserver problems.  That is
> useful if you want to reply encrypted on a non-encrypted message.

Right.  I believe the header is useful even if keyservers do not have
a problem.  There may be more than one key for foo@xxxxxxx on
keyservers, right?  I think it is better to use the key for the key id
in the OpenPGP header than to chose a random key from the key server.

Thanks,
Simon