[7774] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: reflecting on PGP, keyservers, and the Web of Trust
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)
Wed Sep 6 12:09:02 2000
To: Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net>
Cc: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>, "P.J. Ponder" <ponder@freenet.tlh.fl.us>,
Dan Geer <geer@world.std.com>, cryptography@c2.net
From: Derek Atkins <warlord@mit.edu>
Date: 06 Sep 2000 11:50:17 -0400
In-Reply-To: Ray Dillinger's message of "Tue, 5 Sep 2000 21:22:55 -0700 (PDT)"
Message-ID: <sjmzolla5ae.fsf@rcn.ihtfp.org>
Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> writes:
> I have long felt that PGP missed a trick when it didn't have
> automatic expiry for keys -- It should be possible to build
> into each key an expiration date, fixed at the time of its
> creation. For shorter keys, it ought to default to expiring
> sooner, and not allow expiry more than a year or two out.
> For a 2048 bit key, it ought to default to something like 10
> years and let you pick a term up to a century.
Actually, PGP has always had a key expiry time, even as long ago as
PGP 2.0 (maybe even longer). The only problem is that it defaults to
'0', which means 'no expiry'. So, I'm not convinced that PGP "missed
a trick" here, just that it didn't actually use the feature.
-derek
--
Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB)
URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/ PP-ASEL N1NWH
warlord@MIT.EDU PGP key available
