John , Rodney & JON :
I think this a wonderfull idea whose time has come.
I'm involved in agreat deal of PGP training to english and non-english
audiences and am particularly interested in how different implementations
handle non USA ASCII text. If this aspect of testing might be of interest,
please do let me know..as more than happy to help
Regards,
Robert
ps.
--On Monday, March 19, 2001 7:50 PM -0600 John W Noerenberg II
<jwn2(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> wrote:
Earlier this month I proposed an interoperability testing meeting for
OpenPGP. A number of people have responded they are interested in
participating, and I've given some more thought to what we want to
accomplish. Rod Thayer and I had the opportunity to discuss it further
today, and a plan is beginning to take shape.
The OpenPGP Oven-Cooking Competition (in deference to a local Minneapolis
company who feels another name impinges their reputation) is intended to
test compliance with 2440 in a variety of scenarios. I'll provide a
compliance matrix for the 2440 requirements that implementers can use as
a guide. The matrix will be reviewed both by Rod and by Jon Callas to
make sure I haven't missed anything important, or misstated anything.
And, of course, it will be published to this list as soon as possible for
your review. Uses of OpenPGP we anticipate testing are PGP/MIME, TLS
over OpenPGP, and IPSec over OpenPGP. We'll verify interoperation of key
generation, signing and verification. We're considering ways to verify
key server interoperability. However, there are no published protocols
for this. So I'm not sure what we can accomplish in this area. We'd
like to test implementations of the AES algorithms, as well as the
mandated algorithms in 2440. Execution speed isn't nearly as important
as correct execution of the protocols and underlying algorithms. But bear
in mind that I don't expect the meeting to last more than 2 days. <grin>
Rod will create a more detailed test plan which we'll publish for
comments on the list. I'd like to aim at holding the Oven-Cooking
Competition sometime during June or July so that we can publish our
status on 2440 in time for the London meeting. Some people have
indicated they won't be able to participate in person, so one of the
things I'll arrange is a means for people to also test remotely. However,
I want to emphasize how valuable face-to-face meetings are for
interoperability testing. We'll be able to solve problems interactively,
and discover issues that otherwise may take a long time to surface.
These are my general goals for the meeting. Please comment and offer
suggestions. That's the best way to insure this little confab serves
your needs as implementers and users of OpenPGP.
--
john noerenberg
jwn2(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com
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Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really. It's the whole thing.
That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it
is poor maintenance.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig, 1974
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Robert Guerra <rguerra(_at_)yahoo(_dot_)com>
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/rguerra/