ietf-openpgp
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Re: V5 signatures

1999-06-18 07:50:20
In 
<19990528123701(_dot_)A28938(_at_)frodo(_dot_)isil(_dot_)d(_dot_)shuttle(_dot_)de>,
 on 05/28/99 
   at 05:37 AM, Werner Koch <wk(_at_)isil(_dot_)d(_dot_)shuttle(_dot_)de> said:

Werner Koch <wk(_at_)isil(_dot_)d(_dot_)shuttle(_dot_)de> writes:

However, the octet count for the [un]hashed subpackets is limited to
65535.

It just came to my mind, that large signature packets (currently they
have a limit of about 128k) do impose a problem:

It will then not be possible to keep the complete signature packet in
memory.  Signatures may be (theoretical) very large - up to 4 Gigs and
due to this they have to be handled like plaintext.

Doess it really make sense to build a protocol - based on OpenPGP - 
which puts all it's dat into a signature packet?  Such data should go
into a literal text packet or some new packet type.


IMNSHO it is brain dead to stuff data into signature packets. It is not
where it belongs. PGP has a very nice and simple signature format: A hash
of the data encrypted with the signer's public key. That's all that needs
to be there, no need to start bloating out the signatures.

-- 
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Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

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Hi Jeff!! :)
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