[openpgp] "OpenPGP Simple"

[David Leon Gil]

On Monday, March 16, 2015, David Shaw <dshaw at jabberwocky.com> wrote:

> On Mar 16, 2015, at 5:15 PM, David Leon Gil <coruus at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > Re Jon's comment above: The five-octet, new-format thing is what the
> End-to-End extension does.
> >
> > On Monday, March 16, 2015, Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org <javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:12, singpolyma at singpolyma.net <javascript:;>
> said:
> >
> > > Yes.  Last time I checked, gnupg < 2 (which is still the default on
> > > most of my systems) only generates old-style headers, whereas my
> >
> > That depends on how you invoke gpg and whether the new packer headers
> > are required.  That is required for PGP-2 compatibility.
> >
> > Is there an option to completely disable this?
>
> Not in the current code, but you can of course patch it.
>
> > Relatedly, is there any option to not use new-format partial lengths?
>
> A partial length is needed to handle content as a stream - say some
> program that generates gigabytes of data (like a backup).  Something large
> enough that you really don't want to have to buffer the whole thing before
> encrypting it.
>

I agree on that. But I think this really requires a different mode of
operation / standard. See, e.g.,
https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/06/27/streamingencryption.html I'm not
sure that an OpenPGP WG is the right place to do this.

(Which is why I said that the scope should be limited to email-length
messages.)

--

But, e.g., GnuPG (always?) emits partial lengths, even for data it already
knows the length of (and is << even 2^20 bytes).
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