How to send GnuPG signed mail to linux-kernel and maintainers?

Luca Barbieri (ldb@ldb.ods.org)
26 May 2002 14:29:07 +0200


--=-8iU2O/H4rXF9rRhGgwdt
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Until now, I have sent mail to linux-kernel using an unmodified version
of Ximian Evolution with PGP sign turned on.

However, I've noticed that this causes the message to contain some
escape codes that, after reading a few RFCs and the source code, turn
out to be caused by the fact that Evolution, in compliance with RFC2015,
sends PGP-signed bodies as quoted-printable unless they are already
tagged as base64.

The rationale is that quoted-printable avoids any modification by
gateways that would obviously cause the signature to be invalid.
However, both the cs.helsinki.fi archive and Linus' scripts (he is
quoted in the L-K FAQ saying that he only wants unmangled text/plain) do
not properly support MIME transfer encodings.
Furthermore, if a gateway modifies a message, patches should also be
adversely affected, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Thus, among the possible solutions, the best one (and the one I'm
currently using, by patching Evolution) appears to be violating the RFC
and sending as 7-bit rather than as quoted-printable, risking
invalidation of the signatures by gateway modifications.

Not using digital signatures is obviously not an option since there is
no way to prove that a message was not authentic (if it contains a
trojan patch, for example).

Is this solution the best/recommended one?
Shouldn't this be added to the FAQ?

--=-8iU2O/H4rXF9rRhGgwdt
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc
Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQA88NUTdjkty3ft5+cRAuZUAKCOQTlr4Le8qLMUM1Y+Q7RtQVSSfACdF6Nl
JpCK/e61InLbynmov/I7Olg=
=ipHf
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--=-8iU2O/H4rXF9rRhGgwdt--
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