Network Working Group A. Smasher Internet-Draft S. Josefsson Expires: March 27, 2006 September 23, 2005 The OpenPGP mail and news header draft-josefsson-openpgp-mailnews-header-02 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on March 27, 2006. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract This document describes the OpenPGP mail and news header field. The field provide information about the sender's OpenPGP key. See for more information. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 1] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 Table of Contents 1. Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Background and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. OpenPGP Header Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. Primary Key ID field: id . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.2. Key URL field: url . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.3. Protection Preference Field: preference . . . . . . . . . 6 4. Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 10. Copying conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 12 Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 2] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 1. Preface This document is intended to define the "OpenPGP" message header. This header should be considered "informational" (and "optional"), and be suitable for both mail [8] and netnews [1] messages. This header should be used to provide information about the sender's OpenPGP [7] key. This header MAY be used in any message. This document should be interpreted within the context of RFC 2822. In the event of a discrepancy, refer to that document. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [4]. 2. Background and Motivation There are quite a few PGP and GnuPG users who add headers with information about the sender's OpenPGP key. Headers in current use include "X-PGP:", "X-PGP-Key:", "X-Request-PGP:", "X-PGP-KeyID:", and "X-PGP-Fingerprint:". The headers lack standardization, which prevent them from being reliably parsed automatically by applications, rather than manually parsed by humans. Since both PGP and GnuPG rely on the OpenPGP protocol, it appear preferable to use the term "OpenPGP" rather than "PGP", or "GPG", in the header name. The latter forms appear as underhanded attempts to advocate specific applications, rather than the open standard they both share. The header specified here is named "OpenPGP". The OpenPGP header is not a required part of successful use of OpenPGP in e-mail. It is intended as a convenience, in those situations where the user experience may be enhanced by using the information in this header. Consequently, the information in this header should not disrupt the normal OpenPGP key retrieval and web of trust mechanism. Neither the integrity nor the authenticity of the information in this header should be assumed to be correct or be trust-worthy. No specific scenario when the header should be used, nor how it should be used in that scenario, are suggested by this document. It is acknowledged that the dominant use of the information in this header may be by humans and not applications. To promote good use of this header, care should be taken so that applications do not trigger error messages that may annoy the user, when an error condition arise during handling of the OpenPGP header. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 3] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 It is generally recommended that an implementation ignore the presence of the OpenPGP header if an error condition occur. Since the header is optional, this approach should not be difficult to implement. The philosophy here is to enable an enhanced user experience. Error messages rarely contribute to that goal. 3. OpenPGP Header Field This header is intended to present characteristics of the sender's OpenPGP key. It may contain the Key ID and the URL where the key can be retrieved. This header is of a "structured" type (see section 2.2.2 of RFC 2822). In general, the structure consist of one or more parameters, each consisting of one attribute and one value. The terminology and format of the header was inspired by MIME [2]. The various provisions of RFC 2045 apply. In particular, the value part of all parameters may be quoted; whitespace, foldoing and comments may occur in the middle of parameters. The provisions of MIME [3] also apply; in particular it deals with handling parameters of excessive length. In the Augmented BNF [5] notation, an OpenPGP header field is defined as below. By itself, however, this grammar is incomplete. It refers by name to several syntax rules that are defined by RFC 2822 and the URI syntax document [6]. Rather than reproduce those definitions here, and risk unintentional differences between the two, this document refer the reader to RFC 2822 and RFC 2396 for the definition of non-terminals. Unrecognized parameters MUST be ignored. The grammar permit them to allow for future extensions. This header SHOULD NOT appear more than once within a message. A given parameter type (i.e., "id", "url" or "preference") MUST NOT occur more than once. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 4] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 openpgp := "OpenPGP:" (openpgp-parameter *(";" openpgp-parameter)) CRLF id := *HEXDIG url := absoluteURI ; Defined in RFC 2396. preference := "sign" / "encrypt" / "signencrypt" / "unprotected" openpgp-parameter := ("id" "=" id) / ("url" "=" url) / ("preference" "=" preference) / parameter ; See RFC 2045 for definition of parameter. 3.1. Primary Key ID field: id The "id" attribute=value pair, if present, MUST define the primary key ID. The value MUST identify the key ID (in either short or long form) or the fingerprint, all using the hexadecimal [14] notation. The length of the field imply the kind of key id, i.e., short or long form, or a v3 or v4 key. Note that each of the following examples includes a comment, which is optional. id=12345678 (short key ID) id=1234567890ABCDEF (long key ID) id=1234567890abcdef01234567890ABCDEF0123456 (v4 fingerprint) id=1234567890ABCDEF01234567890ABCDE (v3 fingerprint, deprecated) 3.2. Key URL field: url The "url" attribute=value pair, if present, MUST specify a URL where the public key can be found. It is RECOMMENDED to use a common URL family, such as HTTP [12] or FTP [9]. The URL MUST be fully qualified, MUST explicitly specify a protocol and SHOULD be accessible on the public Internet. For example: url=http://example.org/pgp.txt Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 5] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 3.3. Protection Preference Field: preference The "preference" attribute=value pair, if present, specify the quality of protection preferred by the sender. The available choices are "unprotected" which means that the sender prefer not to receive OpenPGP protected e-mails. A "sign" token means that the sender prefer to receive digitally signed e-mails. A "encrypt" token means that the sender prefer to receive digitally encrypted e-mails. A "signencrypt" token means that the sender prefer to receive digitally encrypted and signed e-mails. Note that there is no technical requirement on the receiver to follow the stated preference. For example: preference=sign preference="unprotected" preference=ENCRYPT 4. Comments As discussed in section 3.2.3 of RFC 2822, comments may appear in header field bodies. Comments are not intended to be interpreted by any application, but to provide additional information for humans. The following are examples of header field bodies with comments: id=B565716F (key stored on non-networked laptop) id=12345678 (1024 bit RSA Key for Encrypt or Sign) id=ABCD0123 (created Sun Jan 2 02:25:15 CET 2005) 5. Examples These are valid examples of ways in which this header may be used. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but do reflect expected typical usages. OpenPGP: id=12345678 OpenPGP: url=http://example.com/key.txt OpenPGP: preference=unprotected OpenPGP: url=http://example.com/key.txt; id=12345678 OpenPGP: id=12345678; url=http://example.com/key.txt; preference=signencrypt OpenPGP: url=http://example.com/key.txt (down 2-3pm UTC); id=12345678 (this key is only used at the office); preference=sign (unsigned emails are filtered away) Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 6] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 6. Open Issues Should there be a "supports" field, that signal whether the sender support inline PGP or PGP/MIME? As in supports="inline, mime" or similar. Should it be in preferred priority order? This draft tentatively closes this issue by ignoring the matter, until someone proposes text. The ABNF definition is known to be under-specified. 7. Acknowledgements The content of this document builds on discussions with (in alphabetical order) Christian Biere, Patrick Brunschwig, Jon Callas, Peter J. Holzer, Ingo Klocker, Werner Koch, Jochen Kupper, Charles Lindsey, Aleksandar Milivojevic, Xavier Maillard, Greg Sabino Mullane, Thomas Roessler, Moritz Schulte, Olav Seyfarth, Thomas Sjogren, Paul Walker, and Steve Youngs. No doubt the list is incomplete. We apologize to anyone we left out. 8. Security Considerations These headers are intended to be a convenience in locating public keys: They are neither secure nor intended to be. Since header information is easy to spoof, information contained in headers should not be trusted: The information must be verified. How the information is verified is left as an exercise for the reader. Applications that interpret the data within this header MUST NOT assume that the data is correct, and MUST NOT present the data to the user in any way that would cause the user to assume that it is correct. Applications that interpret the data within this header SHOULD alert the user that this information is not a substitute for personally verifying keys and being a part of the web of trust. If an application receives a signed message and uses the information in this header to retrieve a key, the application MAY ignore the retrieved key if it is not the same key used to sign the message. This SHOULD be done before the newly retrieved key is imported into the user's keyring. The use of HTTPS [13], DNSSEC [10], SMTP STARTTLS [11], and other secure protocols, may enhance the security of information conveyed through this header, but does not guarantee any level of security or authenticity. Developers and users must remain aware of this. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 7] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 Version 3 OpenPGP keys can be created with a chosen key id (aka "the 0xDEADBEEF attack"). Verifying the Key ID of a retrived key against the one provided in this header is thus not sufficient to protect against a man-in-the-middle attack. Instead, the web-of-trust mechanism should be used. If an attacker wants to check the validity of Email addresses, he might send out junk email to arbitrary addresses and collect those that report back to the crafted OpenPGP URL. To protect against this, implementations MUST inform the user of that potential privacy issue when retrieving keys from an URL provided by the mail headers of an inbound email message: either when the feature is enabled or to be used for the first time or every time the MUA detects an unknown key. Given the flexibility of the syntax of the header, slightly varying the content between messages can be used as a covert channel. 9. IANA Considerations The IANA is asked to register the OpenPGP header, using the template as follows, in accordance with RFC 3864 [15]. Header field name: OpenPGP Applicable protocol: mail, netnews Status: informational Author/Change controller: IETF Specification document(s): This document. Related information: None Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 8] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 10. Copying conditions In addition to the IETF/ISOC copying conditions, the following statement grant third parties further rights to this document. Copyright (C) 2004 Atom Smasher Copyright (C) 2004, 2005 Simon Josefsson Regarding this entire document or any portion of it, the authors makes no guarantees and is not responsible for any damage resulting from its use. The authors grants irrevocable permission to anyone to use, modify, and distribute it in any way that does not diminish the rights of anyone else to use, modify, and distribute it, provided that redistributed derivative works do not contain misleading author or version information. Derivative works need not be licensed under similar terms. 11. References 11.1. Normative References [1] Horton, M. and R. Adams, "Standard for interchange of USENET messages", RFC 1036, December 1987. [2] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. [3] Freed, N. and K. Moore, "MIME Parameter Value and Encoded Word Extensions: Character Sets, Languages, and Continuations", RFC 2231, November 1997. [4] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [5] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997. [6] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. [7] Callas, J., Donnerhacke, L., Finney, H., and R. Thayer, "OpenPGP Message Format", RFC 2440, November 1998. [8] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April 2001. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 9] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 11.2. Informative References [9] Postel, J. and J. Reynolds, "File Transfer Protocol", STD 9, RFC 959, October 1985. [10] Eastlake, D., "Domain Name System Security Extensions", RFC 2535, March 1999. [11] Newman, C., "Using TLS with IMAP, POP3 and ACAP", RFC 2595, June 1999. [12] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999. [13] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000. [14] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings", RFC 3548, July 2003. [15] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864, September 2004. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 10] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 Authors' Addresses Atom Smasher Email: atom@smasher.org (762A3B98A3C396C9C6B7582AB88D52E4D9F57808) Simon Josefsson Email: simon@josefsson.org (0424D4EE81A0E3D119C6F835EDA21E94B565716F) Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 11] Internet-Draft The OpenPGP mail and news header September 2005 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Disclaimer of Validity This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Smasher & Josefsson Expires March 27, 2006 [Page 12]