Some proposals for future synchronising keyserver development

[Andrew Gallagher]

Hi, all.

It’s been quiet in keyserver land recently, but I recently published four 
proposals for how to move forward on the Hockeypuck github blog, and all 
feedback is welcome:


HIP 2: SKS v2 protocol

        Sync using hashes of self-sig packets rather than hashes of TPKs would 
mitigate several well-known issues with the SKS protocol. This proposal evolved 
out of previous discussions around decomposing TPKs into atoms. tl;dr: you 
don’t have to decompose into atoms, just pretend to the recon protocol that you 
did.

        https://github.com/hockeypuck/hockeypuck/wiki/HIP-2:-SKS-v2-protocol


HIP 3: Timestamp-aware merge strategy

        1pa3pc is a great idea, but it’s still a long way off standardisation 
and requires updates to all clients. But we don’t need actual attested 
signatures if keyservers treat the most recent self-sig anywhere on the key as 
equivalent to an attestation sig, and infer the same behaviour from it.

         
https://github.com/hockeypuck/hockeypuck/wiki/HIP-3:-Timestamp-aware-merge-strategy


HIP 4: Third-party revocation sig distribution

        Both 1pa3pc and HIP 3 above can prevent the distribution of third-party 
revocation signatures, meaning that a malicious actor could strip third-party 
revocations from the keyserver copy of his key and pass it off as still 
certified. Distributing revocations with the _signing_ key rather than the 
signee avoids this issue.

        
https://github.com/hockeypuck/hockeypuck/wiki/HIP-4:-Third-party-revocation-sig-distribution


HIP 5: Reliable personal data deletion using self-signatures

        Previous proposals for automated deletion of personal information from 
keyservers have all developed holes under closer scrutiny. Here’s a new attempt 
using direct key self-sigs and (potentially?) no protocol changes.

        
https://github.com/hockeypuck/hockeypuck/wiki/HIP-5:-Reliable-personal-data-deletion-using-self-signatures


Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Andrew.

(Crossposted to sks-devel, gnupg-devel and hockeypuck-devel)

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