[JDEV] PGP / Public Key retrieval

Erisson erisson at mail.kaosklan.net
Mon Oct 9 14:13:33 CDT 2000


On Mon, Oct 09, 2000 at 07:51:58PM +0200, Max Horn wrote:
> OK, I finally begun adding PGP support to Jabbernaut (don't hold your 
> breath, it'll take some time to finish, as I'm really busy moving & 
> beginning to study & having a real life <g>)

Cool.

> Anyway, what I really want to know:
> 
> * what clients already implement PGP / the various namespaces for it 
> (x:signed and x:encrypted IIRC) ? I know Imjay and KIM so far, are 
> there others?
 
Those are the only two I've been able to find. 

> * how am I supposed to get the key of the guy I'm talking to? I know 
> Imjay tries to get it from the vCard. And I also thought about using 
> the jabber ID like an email (in the MacOS PGP SDK I can get a key 
> based on the email).
 
KIM also searches for JID based on email. Not sure if it'll import from
a key server or not. But it seems to me that this would be the best
way to make use of the infrastructure that already exists. Another
possibility, which is a bit of a hybrid, is to store the key ID, or
maybe fingerprint in the vCard as a hint, and fetch it from a key
server to actually get it. The reason I throw this out there is that
sometimes e-mail and jabber ids don't match, and adding a new userid
to a preexisting key isn't necessarily the best fix, but storing the key 
in the vCard could get expensive when, like one of the guys who signed 
my key, your key is ~60k.

> We really should agree on some sort of (semi-)standard. It doesn't 
> have to be a full-fledged standard, but at least some guidlines for 
> client authors...

I'm all for this, too.

Erisson/Peter 




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