Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface
draft-dkg-openpgp-stateless-cli-00
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Daniel Kahn Gillmor | ||
| Last updated | 2019-10-28 | ||
| Stream | (None) | ||
| Formats | plain text xml htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-dkg-openpgp-stateless-cli-00
openpgp D. Gillmor
Internet-Draft ACLU
Intended status: Informational October 28, 2019
Expires: April 30, 2020
Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface
draft-dkg-openpgp-stateless-cli-00
Abstract
This document defines a generic stateless command-line interface for
dealing with OpenPGP messages, known as "sop". It aims for a
minimal, well-structured API for dealing with OpenPGP object
security.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 30, 2020.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Subcommands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Version Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Generate a Secret Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Convert a Secret Key to a Certificate . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4. Create a Detached Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.5. Verify a Detached Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.6. Encrypt a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.7. Decrypt a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.8. Adding ASCII Armor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.9. Removing ASCII Armor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Input/Output Indirect Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. CERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. KEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3. CIPHERTEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.4. SIGNATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.5. SESSIONKEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.6. PASSWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.7. VERIFICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.8. DATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Failure modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Guidance for Implementors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1. One OpenPGP Message At a Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2. Simplified Subset of OpenPGP Message . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3. Validate Signatures Only From Known Signers . . . . . . . 13
6.4. Detached Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.5. Reliance on Supplied Certs and Keys . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Guidance for Consumers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.1. Signature Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.2. Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.1. Object Security vs. Transport Security . . . . . . . . . 15
10. Document Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10.1. Document History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.2. Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
1. Introduction
Different OpenPGP implementations have many different requirements,
which typically break down in two main categories: key/certificate
management and object security.
The purpose of this document is to provide a "stateless" interface
that primarily handles the object security side of things, and
assumes that secret key management and certificate management will be
handled some other way.
This separation should make it easier to provide interoperability
testing for the object security work, and to allow implementations to
consume and produce new cryptographic primitives as needed.
This document defines a generic stateless command-line interface for
dealing with OpenPGP messages, known here by the placeholder "sop".
It aims for a minimal, well-structured API.
An OpenPGP implementation should not name its executable "sop" to
implement this specification, of course. It just needs to provide an
binary that conforms to this interface.
A "sop" implementation should leave no trace on the system, and its
behavior should not be affected by anything other than command-line
arguments and input.
Obviously, the user will need to manage their secret keys (and their
peers' certificates) somehow, but the goal of this interface is to
separate out that task from the task of interacting with OpenPGP
messages.
While this document identifies a command-line interface, the rough
outlines of this interface should also be amenable to relatively
straightforward library implementations in different languages.
1.1. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
1.2. Terminology
This document uses the term "key" to refer exclusively to OpenPGP
Transferable Secret Keys (see section 11.2 of [RFC4880]).
It uses the term "certificate" to refer to OpenPGP Transferable
Public Key (see section 11.1 of [RFC4880]).
"Stateless" in "Stateless OpenPGP" means avoiding secret key and
certificate state. The user is responsible for managing all OpenPGP
certificates and secret keys themselves, and passing them to "sop" as
needed. The user should also not be concerned that any state could
affect the underlying operations.
2. Examples
These examples show no error checking, but give a flavor of how "sop"
might be used in practice from a shell.
The key and certificate files described in them (e.g. "alice.sec")
could be for example those found in
[I-D.draft-bre-openpgp-samples-00].
sop generate "Alice Lovelace <alice@openpgp.example>" > alice.sec
sop convert < alice.sec > alice.pgp
sop sign --as=text alice.sec < announcement.txt > announcement.txt.asc
sop verify announcement.txt.asc alice.pgp < announcement.txt
sop encrypt --sign-with=alice.sec --as=mime bob.pgp < msg.eml > encrypted.asc
sop decrypt alice.sec < ciphertext.asc > cleartext.out
3. Subcommands
"sop" uses a subcommand interface, similar to those popularized by
systems like "git" and "svn".
If the user supplies a subcommand that "sop" does not implement, it
fails with a return code of 69. If a "sop" implementation does not
handle a supplied option for a given subcommand, it fails with a
return code of 37.
For all commands that have an "--armor|--no-armor" option, it
defaults to "--armor", meaning that any output OpenPGP material
should be ASCII-armored (section 6 of [I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis])
by default.
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
3.1. Version Information
sop version
o Standard Input: ignored
o Standard Output: version string
The version string emitted should contain the name of the "sop"
implementation, followed by a single space, followed by the version
number.
3.2. Generate a Secret Key
sop generate [--armor|--no-armor] [--] [USERID...]
o Standard Input: ignored
o Standard Output: "KEY" (Section 4.2)
Generate a single default OpenPGP certificate with zero or more User
IDs.
3.3. Convert a Secret Key to a Certificate
sop convert [--armor|--no-armor]
o Standard Input: "KEY" (Section 4.2)
o Standard Output: "CERT" (Section 4.1)
3.4. Create a Detached Signature
sop sign [--armor|--no-armor]
[--as={binary|text}] [--] KEY [KEY...]
o Standard Input: "DATA" (Section 4.8)
o Standard Output: "SIGNATURE" (Section 4.4)
"--as" defaults to "binary". If "--as=text" and the input "DATA" is
not valid "UTF-8", "sop sign" fails with a return code of 53.
3.5. Verify a Detached Signature
sop verify [--not-before=DATE] [--not-after=DATE]
[--] SIGNATURE CERT [CERT...]
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
o Standard Input: "DATA" (Section 4.8)
o Standard Output: "VERIFICATIONS" (Section 4.7)
"--not-before" and "--not-after" indicate that only signatures with
dates in a certain range should be considered as possibly valid.
"--not-before" defaults to the beginning of time.
"--not-after" defaults to "now".
"sop verify" only returns 0 if at least one of the supplied "CERT"s
made a valid signature in the range over the "DATA" supplied.
For details about the valid signatures, the user MUST inspect the
"VERIFICATIONS" output.
If no "CERT" is supplied, "sop verify" fails with a return code of
19.
If at least one "CERT" is supplied, but no valid signatures are
found, "sop verify" fails with a return code of 3.
See Section 8.1 for more details about signature verification.
3.6. Encrypt a Message
sop encrypt [--as={binary|text|mime}]
[--armor|--no-armor]
[--mode={any|communications|storage}]
[--with-password=PASSWORD...]
[--session-key=SESSIONKEY]
[--sign-with=KEY...]
[--] [CERT...]
o Standard Input: "DATA" (Section 4.8)
o Standard Output: "CIPHERTEXT" (Section 4.3)
"--as" defaults to "binary".
"--mode" defaults to "any", meaning any encryption-capable subkey may
be used.
"--with-password" enables symmetric encryption (and can be used
multiple times if multiple passwords are desired). If "sop encrypt"
encounters a "PASSWORD" which is not a valid "UTF-8" string, it fails
with a return code of 31. If "sop encrypt" sees trailing whitespace
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
at the end of a "PASSWORD", it will trim the trailing whitespace
before using the password.
"--session-key" permits the encryptor to select the symmetric
encryption algorithm and specific session key.
"--sign-with" enables signing by a secret key (and can be used
multiple times if multiple signatures are desired).
If "--as" is set to either "--text" or "--mime", then "--sign-with"
will sign as a canonical text document. In this case, if the input
"DATA" is not valid "UTF-8", "sop encrypt" fails with a return code
of 53.
The resulting "CIPHERTEXT" should be decryptable by the secret keys
corresponding to each identified "CERT".
If no "CERT" or "--with-password" options are present, "sop encrypt"
fails with a return code of 19.
3.7. Decrypt a Message
sop decrypt [--session-key-out=SESSIONKEY]
[--with-password=PASSWORD...]
[--verify-out=VERIFICATIONS
[--verify-with=CERT...]
[--verify-not-before=DATE]
[--verify-not-after=DATE] ]
[--] [KEY...]
o Standard Input: "CIPHERTEXT" (Section 4.3)
o Standard Output: "DATA" (Section 4.8)
"--session-key-out" can be used to learn the session key on
successful decryption.
If "sop decrypt" fails for any reason and the identified "SESSIONKEY"
file already exists in the filesystem, the file will be unlinked.
"--with-password" enables symmetric decryption (and can be used
multiple times if the user wants to try more password are tried).
If "sop decrypt" tries and fails to use a supplied "PASSWORD", and it
observes that there is trailing "UTF-8" whitespace at the end of the
"PASSWORD", it will retry with the trailing whitespace stripped.
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
"--verify-out" produces signature verification status to the
designated file.
"sop decrypt" does not fail (that is, the return code is not
modified) based on the results of signature verification. The caller
MUST check the returned "VERIFICATIONS" to confirm signature status.
An empty "VERIFICATIONS" output indicates that no valid signatures
were found. If "sop decrypt" itself fails for any reason, and the
identified "VERIFICATIONS" file already exists in the filesystem, the
file will be unlinked.
"--verify-with" identifies a certificate whose signatures would be
acceptable for signatures over this message.
If the caller is interested in signature verification, both "--
verify-out" and at least one "--verify-with" must be supplied. If
only one of these arguments is supplied, "sop decrypt" fails with a
return code of 23.
"--verify-not-before" and "--verify-not-after" provide a date range
for acceptable signatures, by analogy with the options for "sop
verify". They should only be supplied when doing signature
verification.
See Section 8.1 for more details about signature verification.
If no "KEY" or "--with-password" options are present, "sop decrypt"
fails with a return code of 19.
If unable to decrypt, "sop decrypt" fails with a return code of 29.
"sop decrypt" only returns cleartext to Standard Output that was
successfully decrypted.
3.8. Adding ASCII Armor
sop armor [--label={sig|key|cert|message}]
o Standard Input: 8-bit, unarmored OpenPGP material ("SIGNATURE",
"CERT", "KEY", or "CIPHERTEXT")
o Standard Output: the same material with ASCII-armoring added
The user can choose to specify the label used in the header and tail
of the armoring. If the user does not specify, "sop" inspects the
input and chooses the label appropriately. If "sop" cannot select a
label on the basis of the input, it treats it as literal data, and
labels it as a "message".
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
3.9. Removing ASCII Armor
sop dearmor
o Standard Input: ASCII-armored OpenPGP material ("CIPHERTEXT",
"SIGNATURE", "CERT", or "KEY")
o Standard Output: the same material with ASCII-armoring removed
4. Input/Output Indirect Types
Some material is passed to "sop" indirectly, typically by referring
to a filename containing the data in question. This type of data may
also be passed to "sop" on Standard Input, or delivered by "sop" to
Standard Output.
If the filename for any indirect material used as input has the
special form "@ENV:xxx", then contents of environment variable "$xxx"
is used instead of looking in the filesystem.
If the filename for any indirect material used as either input or
output has the special form "@FD:nnn" where "nnn" is a decimal
integer, then the associated data is read from file descriptor "nnn".
If any input data does not meet the requirements described below,
"sop" will fail with a return code of 41.
4.1. CERT
One OpenPGP certificate (section 11.1 of
[I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]) aka "Transferable Public Key". May be
armored.
4.2. KEY
One OpenPGP Transferable Secret Key (section 11.2 of
[I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]). May be armored.
Secret key material should be in cleartext (that is, it should not be
locked with a password). If the secret key maerial is locked with a
password, "sop" may fail to use the key.
4.3. CIPHERTEXT
"sop" accepts only a restricted subset of the arbitrarily-nested
grammar allowed by the OpenPGP Messages definition (section 11.3 of
[I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]).
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
In particular, it accepts and generates only:
An OpenPGP message, consisting of a sequence of PKESKs (section 5.1
of [I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]) and SKESKs (section 5.3 of
[I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]), followed by one SEIPD (section 5.14
of [I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]).
The SEIPD can decrypt into one of two things:
o "Maybe Signed Data" (see below), or
o Compressed data packet that contains "Maybe Signed Data"
"Maybe Signed Data" is a sequence of:
o N (zero or more) one-pass signature packets, followed by
o zero or more signature packets, followed by
o one Literal data packet, followed by
o N signature packets (corresponding to the outer one-pass
signatures packets)
FIXME: does any tool do compression inside signing? Do we need to
handle that?
May be armored.
4.4. SIGNATURE
One or more OpenPGP Signature packets. May be armored.
4.5. SESSIONKEY
This documentation uses the GnuPG defacto "ASCII" representation:
"ALGONUM:HEXKEY"
where "ALGONUM" is the decimal value associated with the OpenPGP
Symmetric Key Algorithms (section 9.3 of
[I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]).
As input, "ALGONUM:" alone (with an empty "HEXKEY") means "user
specifies the algorithm, but the implementation chooses an arbitrary
key for the cipher."
Example AES256 session key:
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
9:FCA4BEAF687F48059CACC14FB019125CD57392BAB7037C707835925CBF9F7BCD
4.6. PASSWORD
This is expected to be a "UTF-8" string, but for "sop decrypt", any
bytestring that the user supplies will be accepted. Note the details
in "sop encrypt" and "sop decrypt" about trailing whitespace!
4.7. VERIFICATIONS
One line per successful signature verification. Each line has two
structured fields delimited by a single space, followed by arbitary
text to the end of the line.
o ISO-8601 UTC datestamp
o Fingerprint of primary key of signing certificate
o arbitrary text
Example:
2019-10-24T23:48:29Z C4BC2DDB38CCE96485EBE9C2F20691179038E5C6 signed by dkg!
4.8. DATA
Cleartext, arbitrary data. This is either a bytestream or "UTF-8"
text.
It MUST only be "UTF-8" text in the case of input supplied to "sop
sign --as=text" or "encrypt --as={mime|text}". If "sop" receives
"DATA" containing non-"UTF-8" octets it will fail with return code
53.
5. Failure modes
When "sop" succeeds, it will return 0 and emit nothing to Standard
Error. When "sop" fails, it fails with a non-zero return code, and
emits one or more warning messages on Standard Error. Known return
codes include:
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
+--------+----------------------------------------------------------+
| Return | Meaning |
+--------+----------------------------------------------------------+
| 0 | Success |
| | |
| 3 | No acceptable signatures found ("sop verify") |
| | |
| 19 | Missing required argument |
| | |
| 23 | Incomplete verification instructions ("sop decrypt") |
| | |
| 29 | Unable to decrypt ("sop decrypt") |
| | |
| 31 | Non-"UTF-8" password ("sop encrypt") |
| | |
| 37 | Unsupported option |
| | |
| 41 | Invalid data type (no secret key where "KEY" expected, |
| | etc) |
| | |
| 53 | Non-text input where text expected |
| | |
| 69 | Unsupported subcommand |
+--------+----------------------------------------------------------+
A "sop" implementation MAY return other error codes than those listed
above.
6. Guidance for Implementors
"sop" uses a few assumptions that implementers might want to
consider.
6.1. One OpenPGP Message At a Time
"sop" is intended to be a simple tool that operates on one OpenPGP
object at a time. It should be composable, if you want to use it to
deal with multiple OpenPGP objects
FIXME: discuss what this means for streaming. The stdio interface
doesn't necessarily imply streamed output.
6.2. Simplified Subset of OpenPGP Message
While the formal grammar for OpenPGP Message is arbitrarily
nestable,"sop" constrains itself to what it sees as a single "layer"
(see Section 4.3).
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
This is a deliberate choice, because it is what most consumers
expect, and runaway recursion is bad news.
Note that an implementation of "sop decrypt" MAY choose to handle
more complex structures, but if it does, it should document the other
structures it handles and why it chooses to do so. We can use such
documentation to improve future versions of this spec.
6.3. Validate Signatures Only From Known Signers
There are generally only a few signers who are relevant for a given
OpenPGP message. When verifying signatures, "sop" expects that the
caller can identify those relevant signers ahead of time.
6.4. Detached Signatures
"sop" deals with detached signatures as the baseline form of OpenPGP
signatures.
The main problem this avoids is the trickiness of handling a
signature that is mixed inline into the data that it is signing.
6.5. Reliance on Supplied Certs and Keys
A truly stateless implementation may find that it spends more time
validating the internal consistency of certificates and keys than it
does on the actual object security operations.
For performance reasons, an implementation may choose to ignore
validation on certificate and key material supplied to it. The
security implications are of doing so depend on how the certs and
keys are managed outside of "sop".
7. Guidance for Consumers
While "sop" is originally conceived of as an interface for
interoperability testing, it's conceivable that an application that
uses OpenPGP for object security would want to use it.
FIXME: more guidance for how to use such a tool safely and
efficiently goes here.
FIXME: if an encrypted OpenPGP message arrives without metadata, it
is difficult to know which signers to consider when decrypting. How
do we do this efficiently without invoking "sop decrypt" twice, once
without "--verify-*" and again with the expected identity material?
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
8. Security Considerations
The OpenPGP object security model is typically used for
confidentiality and authenticity purposes.
8.1. Signature Verification
In many contexts, an OpenPGP signature is verified, to prove the
origin and integrity of an underlying object.
When "sop" checks a signature (e.g. via "sop verify" or "sop decrypt
--verify-with", it should only consider it to be verified only if at
least all of these conditions are met:
o The signature must be made by a signing-capable public key that is
present in one of the supplied "CERT"s
o The "CERT" and signing subkey must have been created before or at
the signature time
o The "CERT" and signing subkey must not have been expired at the
signature time
o The "CERT" and signing subkey must not be revoked with a "hard"
revocation
o If the "CERT" or signing subkey is revoked with a "soft"
revocation, then the signature time must predate the revocation
o The signing subkey must be properly bound to the primary key, and
cross-signed
o The signature (and any dependent signature, such as the cross-sig
or subkey binding signatures) must be made with strong
cryptographic algorithms (e.g., not "MD5" or a 1024-bit "RSA" key)
Implementers should typically also consider other factors in addition
to the origin and authenticity, including application-specific
information.
For example, consider the application domain of checking software
updates.
If software package Foo version 13.3.2 was signed on 2019-10-04, and
the user receives a copy of Foo version 12.4.8 that was signed on
2019-10-16, it may be authentic and have a more recent signature
date. But it is not an upgrade (12.4.8 < 13.3.2), and therefore it
should not be applied automatically.
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
In such cases, it is critical that the application confirms that the
other information verified is _also_ protected by the relevant
OpenPGP signature.
Signature validity is a complex topic, and this documentation cannot
list all possible details.
8.2. Compression
The interface as currently specified does not allow for control of
compression. Compressing and encrypting data that may contain both
attacker-supplied material and sensitive material could leak
information about the sensitive material (see the CRIME attack).
Unless an application knows for sure that no attacker-supplied
material is present on the input, it should not compress during
encryption.
9. Privacy Considerations
Material produced by "sop encrypt" may be placed on untrusted machine
(e.g., sent through the public "SMTP" network). That material may
contain metadata that leaks associational information (e.g.,
recipient identifiers in PKESK packets). FIXME: document things like
PURBs and "--hidden-recipient")
9.1. Object Security vs. Transport Security
OpenPGP offers an object security model, but says little to nothing
about how the secured objects get to the relevant parties.
When sending or receiving OpenPGP material, the implementer should
consider what privacy leakage is implicit with the transport.
10. Document Considerations
[ RFC Editor: please remove this section before publication ]
This document is currently edited as markdown. Minor editorial
changes can be suggested via merge requests at
https://gitlab.com/dkg/openpgp-stateless-cli or by e-mail to the
authors. Please direct all significant commentary to the public IETF
OpenPGP mailing list: openpgp@ietf.org
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
10.1. Document History
10.2. Future Work
o "split" subcommand (split a clearsigned message into a message and
a detached signature) (see Section 6.4
o certificate transformation into popular publication forms:
* WKD
* DANE OPENPGPKEY
* Autocrypt
o "sop encrypt" - specify compression? (see Section 8.2)
o "sop encrypt" - specify padding policy/mechanism?
o "sop decrypt" - how can it more safely handle zip bombs?
o "sop decrypt" - what should it do when encountering weakly-
encrypted (or unencrypted) input?
o "sop encrypt" - minimize metadata (e.g. "--throw-keyids")?
o handling secret keys that are locked with passwords?
o do we need an interface (for performance?) that says "don't
validate certificates internally, just accept whatever's given as
legit data"? (see Section 6.5)
11. Acknowledgements
This work was inspired by Justus Winter's
[OpenPGP-Interoperability-Test-Suite], and discussions with Justus.
Problems with this spec are not his fault.
12. References
12.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-openpgp-rfc4880bis]
Koch, W., carlson, b., Tse, R., Atkins, D., and D.
Gillmor, "OpenPGP Message Format", draft-ietf-openpgp-
rfc4880bis-08 (work in progress), September 2019.
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft Stateless OpenPGP Command Line Interface October 2019
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC4880] Callas, J., Donnerhacke, L., Finney, H., Shaw, D., and R.
Thayer, "OpenPGP Message Format", RFC 4880,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4880, November 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4880>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
12.2. Informative References
[I-D.draft-bre-openpgp-samples-00]
Einarsson, B., juga, j., and D. Gillmor, "OpenPGP Example
Keys and Certificates", draft-bre-openpgp-samples-00 (work
in progress), October 2019.
[OpenPGP-Interoperability-Test-Suite]
"OpenPGP Interoperability Test Suite", October 2019,
<https://tests.sequoia-pgp.org/>.
Author's Address
Daniel Kahn Gillmor
American Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad St.
New York, NY 10004
USA
Email: dkg@fifthhorseman.net
Gillmor Expires April 30, 2020 [Page 17]