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Subject: Re: [office] OFFICE-2656: Default Signing After Encryption isUnacceptable


Hi Thorsten,

it's not worth discussing which of all possible scenarios is the most
useful one.

The specification should allow the different scenarios, and not hinder
any valid use case - everything else is up to the application.

Malte.

Thorsten Behrens wrote, On 05/06/10 12:51:
> Malte Timmermann wrote:
>> I fully agree that there are valid use cases that the signature of an
>> encrypted document MAY also be encrypted.
>>
>> But you also should agree that there are valid use cases to not encrypt
>> the signature, because you then can't verify document integrity in
>> automated processes w/o knowing the encryption keys.
>>
> Hi Malte,
> 
> well I guess it's really the other way 'round. Honestly, the
> overwhelmingly standard case is to sign first, then encrypt
> (RFC1991, 2440, etc etc). Simply put, encryption means protecting
> document content from plain sight. A signature is part of the
> document, and usually conveys at least some amount of likely private
> information, so the default really should be to encrypt that, too.
> 
> Apart from that, all the nice things from DSIG like only signing node
> sets really only work with access to the unencrypted xml streams -
> so I truly feel that signing encrypted documents is the special
> case, and signing first the norm, with a wealth of useful variations
> suddenly then getting straight-forward, instead of being a hard
> problem.
> 
> Signing first really is sine qua non - everything else is optional.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- Thorsten


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