On Sun, 27 Jun 2010, David Shaw wrote:
On Jun 27, 2010, at 7:50 PM, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
It's effectively a no-op though, as no server supports it.
I'm looking into making mods to at least one server type (we run one
locally at work), and commit them upstream. If I'm going to wade
into that muck, I might as well have multiple things to try to make
work.
The change in the key file format is the "hard" part :)
Having keyservers support no-modify requires that they first support
crypto at all. That's a really big step.
The ones I've seen have enough awareness of what's in a key to pull a
key apart and determine who's signed it, when, and when it's expired.
Is there more than that to read these bits? Again:step zero may be to
determine what the internal format is.
Vastly more. Keyservers are basically databases with a front-end that
understands the OpenPGP key format. They don't actually do any crypto
math - just storing the key packets in the database and allowing people
to search for them.
However, you raise another question: How does a keyserver know who is
uploading the key?
At the moment, it doesn't. That would need to be addressed if you want
keyservers to be able to reject a no-ks-modify key. One way to do it is
to only accept key updates that are signed by the key itself. But, of
course, to do that, the keyserver needs to be able to verify a
signature...
That's one way. Another is to do it the keyserver.pgp.com way, and email
the primary uid a cookie. No crypto required. RFC2440 doesn't at all
require that the authenticity be verified cryptographically. Correct?
While we're at this, do the various keyserver client-implementations
provide any option for passing a human-readable message back to gpg? I
don't see anything in draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp-00, but that's long expired
(but good reading).
From what you're telling me, it also sounds like keyservers don't actually
verify the signatures that are on a key, and that's left up to the client.
However, I think you're still missing my question: is it necessary for the
keyserver to be crypto-aware if I just want a keyserver to reject those
keys outright? Is there crypto involved in reading that flag, or is it
just a simple parse? From reading RFC2440 it seems the latter, but I
certainly respect you've been doing this longer than I :)
-Dan
--
--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie, Sysadmin, WebGeek
Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC
ICQ: 13735144 AIM: LarpGM
Site: http://www.gushi.org
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