[1981] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Whitespace: What should a signature sign?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James A. Donald)
Thu Dec 18 01:12:40 1997
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 21:23:25 -0800 (PST)
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
--
At present Crypto Kong simply signs the exact form of the
document.
Any email mangling of the document during email will cause
the signature to become invalid.
I intend to ignore the difference between (cr)From and
(cr)>From in order to avoid the infamous SendMail bug from
trashing signatures, but what else should be ignored?
Matthew Cromer argues that all white space should be treated
merely as white space. I am not happy about this. Varying
whitespace can change the apparent meaning of the document.
As a preventative against software that performs linebreaks,
Crypto Kong has a reformat command--you can put in your own
linebreaks before some other software does. But if you do
not use this preventative, and probably most people do not,
email and usenet software that introduces linebreaks will
invalidate signatures.
By the way guys, the latest beta release of Crypto Kong
<http://www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong> appears to be working.
I have received no further bug reports since the latest
fixes. The earlier versions crashed miserably on most
people's computers, but what I have out there now is strong
enough for more vigorous testing, so please test.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
kqtoCCeH7/PhBjNrqZq47FUvmTpmHwQ836coSzJO
kNOxNWMJFYfgdAKo9yRx2Lghd5rGdsgLWkqZBdLo
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We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of
the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right,
not from the arbitrary power of the state.
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
