Multiple UIDs or multiple master keys?

Robert J. Hansen rjh at sixdemonbag.org
Tue Jul 14 05:02:55 CEST 2020


> 1: When revoking a UID from my key, it asks for a reason. What
> happened to reasons 1, 2, and 3?
Let's hop in the Wayback Machine and look at the old specification for
OpenPGP, called RFC2440.

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5.2.3.22. Reason for Revocation

   (1 octet of revocation code, N octets of reason string)

   This subpacket is used only in key revocation and certification
   revocation signatures. It describes the reason why the key or
   certificate was revoked.

   The first octet contains a machine-readable code that denotes the
   reason for the revocation:

       0x00 - No reason specified (key revocations or cert revocations)
       0x01 - Key is superceded (key revocations)
       0x02 - Key material has been compromised (key revocations)
       0x03 - Key is no longer used (key revocations)
       0x20 - User id information is no longer valid (cert revocations)

   Following the revocation code is a string of octets which gives
   information about the reason for revocation in human-readable form
   (UTF-8). The string may be null, that is, of zero length. The length
   of the subpacket is the length of the reason string plus one.

=====

Reasons 1, 2, and 3 are simply not used by UID revocations.

To answer your next question of "why is 'User ID information is no
longer valid' number 4, instead of 32 (hexadecimal 20) like it is in the
spec?", I'm guessing to prevent people from wondering what happened to
the other 30-odd (nonexistent) options.  :)



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