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Subject: RE: [office] What to do about encryption?


Malte said:

> Last but not least one goal/wish was to stay quite compatible with ODF
1.1 - but the new encryption approach would be completely incompatible
with every existing implementation.

Yes, but that's unfortunately the nature of encryption changes. If you change the slightest thing, you introduce incompatabilities. This is why we shipped the new encryption that was to go into 2010 in the 2007 SP2. So if you're going to break compatability, then let's go ahead and do that while fixing everything you know that should be fixed.

It is also up to the implementer which approach to use by default. For example, I am at the start of a development cycle. If the other implementers all support the new encryption, then I would make that a default, but I'd still have to warn that MS Office 2007 cannot read it, unless I had some way to update that version.

I agree that we should design the encryption carefully, but I'm not completely sure of the schedule and will refrain from commenting on that. I will say that I would be happier about implementing something that is part of the standard, unless perhaps we have some way to make a working group that can come to an agreement.

I also agree that many of the flaws I listed are minor, some extremely so (e.g., the iteration count for the KDF, which is easily corrected), but now that we've come upon the issue that a signed file cannot be encrypted, and an encrypted, then signed file can never be decrypted without breaking the signature, I think that's a fairly major issue.


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