Subject: Re: New packets in PGP 6.0

From: Hal Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 09:58:30 -0700

William H. Geiger III, <[email-masked]>, writes:
> Well, part of the problem we are going to have here is once these new keys
> get uploaded to to the keyservers. It is my understanding that these new
> packets will break 5.x version of PGP.

Actually PGP 6.0 tries to take some care to avoid breaking existing
software.

The new photo id packets are not uploaded to older keyservers by the
6.0 client.  They are only uploaded to NAI's version 2 LDAP keyservers
(which is the version which ships with 6.0).  This version of the
keyserver stores the photoid in a special data structure which will not
be downloaded pre 6.0 clients.  Only PGP 6.0 knows to ask for data from
this special data structure where photo ids are kept.

When keys are exported explicitly, there is an option in the export
dialog box to cause the photo ids to be stripped, which defaults to the
backwards compatible mode.  The user must go to the advanced preferences
to change this default.

Therefore most users will only be sending their photo ids to the LDAP
keyserver, which will only provide them to 6.0 clients.  It is our
intention that photo ids will remain within the 6.0 "world" as much as
possible.

Hal Finney
Network Associates

---

From: "William H. Geiger III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 13:15:43 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <[email-masked]>, on 09/09/98 
   at 09:58 AM, Hal Finney <[email-masked]> said:

>The new photo id packets are not uploaded to older keyservers by the 6.0
>client.  They are only uploaded to NAI's version 2 LDAP keyservers (which
>is the version which ships with 6.0).  This version of the keyserver
>stores the photoid in a special data structure which will not be
>downloaded pre 6.0 clients.  Only PGP 6.0 knows to ask for data from this
>special data structure where photo ids are kept.

This brings me back to my second question:

Are there any plans for NAI to document the LDAP interface to their
certserver? It would come in handy for those of us developing OpenPGP
applications.

Now I can sift through the 5.5 source code that I have and examine the
packets 6.0 generates while communicating with the certserver but this is
a bit of a PITA.

It would be nice if someone at NAI would write up an informal paper
outlining the communication between the certserver and the client.

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.openpgp.net
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
 
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