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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: Security - handling of pbulic keys, signatures
From:       Marc Mutz <mutz () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-06-28 17:17:40
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On Friday 28 June 2002 13:25, Ferdinand Gassauer wrote:
> Hi!
> As the feature freeze approaches I  want to ask (again), if handling
> of signed messages will be improved for 3.1.
> IMHO a message  like
> **************
> Message was signed with unknown key 0x09B06E10.
> The validity of the signature can't be verified.
> **************
> should
> 1) check the key automaticaly against a public key server (may be it
> does, and if it does it should be stated in the message
> - The validity of the signature can't be verified localy and/or at
> <public key server>

Why? The yellow border nonetheless won't go away, since if you had 
signed the peer's key, then you'd most likely have it on your public 
keyring anyway.

> 2) allow to request the public key from the sender automaticaly  - on
> a mouse click.

I had a patch once that made the key id a link to search on a pgp 
keyserver. It shouldn't be too hard to make it fire up geheimnis if the 
latter is found. Karl-Heinz has done something similar for the S/MIME 
case.

> 3) allow to add the key to the public keyring.

The problem is that we'd need to fetch the key ourselves when we want to 
keep (2) and (3) separate. Or rely on gpg --search-keys, which is only 
available in GnuPG 1.0.7+, and not in PGP or older GnuPG's.

> may be I am missing something ... (integrated function of geheimnis?)

If you want to know whether Geheimnis can do this already, then the 
answer is yes. If the question is for tighter KMail<->Geheimnis 
intagration, then the answer is that Geheimnis first needs to mature a 
bit. We can't distribute a pgp frontend that simply calls pgp/gpg with 
the right parameters and opens a Konsole for the user to do the rest.

> IMHO a non experienced user will not be able to handle it the way it
> works now with command line commands as described in the handbook

Then the user needs to become experienced w.r.t. OpenPGP. ;-)

Seriously. Making OpenPGP even easier and prettier in KMail always has 
the bad side-effect of encouraging users to do stupid things that - in 
this case - hurt others. I have a (now revoked) signature on my key 
that was added by such a user: He saw my mails in KMail and probably 
wanted to make the yellow frame become green. So he signed my key. If 
he did it locally (gpg --lsign), then the damage would have been 
confined to himself. Now, we must trust other OpenPGP implementations 
to correctly forbid users to rely on this user's revoked signature on 
my key for checking the validity of my key.

A GUI can only do so much for making OpenPGP easier for the user. 
Ultimately, she herself has to acquire a decent understanding of the 
principles and - equally important - best and accepted practice.

Geheimnis has the potential to also educate users by asking them the 
questions that need to be asked (esp. when signing). Currently, no GUI 
does the job nearly as good as gpg's command line interface. Esp. with 
1.0.7.

Marc

- -- 
Marc Mutz <mutz@kde.org>
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