Network Working Group A. Swartz Internet-Draft AaronSw.com Expires: January 6, 2003 July 8, 2002 A URN Namespace for PGP Users draft-swartz-pgp-urn-00 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http:// www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on January 6, 2003. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes a URN (Uniform Resource Name) for use by those with OpenPGP keys. OpenPGP is a standardized public-key cryptosystem that provides for digital signatures and encryption. This namespace can be used in conjunction with OpenPGP to ensure reliability of the data by means of a digital signature. Swartz Expires January 6, 2003 [Page 1] Internet-Draft A URN Namespace for PGP Users July 2002 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Specification Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Swartz Expires January 6, 2003 [Page 2] Internet-Draft A URN Namespace for PGP Users July 2002 1. Introduction OpenPGP, defined by the OpenPGP IETF Working Group, is a set of standards providing interoperability between public-key cryptography software. Public-key cryptography identifies users by means of their keypair, which can be thought of a large random number. The first of these, the public key, is made publicly available. However, since it is often too long for most humans to deal with (saying, checking equality, etc.), a shorter "fingerprint" (hash of the public key) is generally used for identification. This namespace allows users with a public key fingerprint a personal namespace which they can use for any resources they wish. This namespace provides not only a decentralized method of allocation to anyone who can run OpenPGP-compatible software, but also provides a means for verifying data about these names via digital signatures. 2. Specification Template This is an NID registration as specified in RFC 2611 [1]. Namespace ID: "pgp" requested Registration Information Registration Version Number: 1 Registration Date: 2002-07-08 Declared registrant of the namespace: Aaron Swartz me@aaronsw.com 349 Marshman Highland Park, IL 60035 USA Declaration of syntactic structure: All URIs will start with "urn:pgp:" followed by the uppercase hex representation of the key fingerprint with no whitespace, followed by another colon. For example: urn:pgp:4FAC4838B7D8D13FA6D92EDB4145521E79F0DF4B: The user may add any valid URI characters after that and decide what resource is identified by the resulting URI. Swartz Expires January 6, 2003 [Page 3] Internet-Draft A URN Namespace for PGP Users July 2002 Relevant ancillary documentation: OpenPGP is defined by RFC 2440 [2] which includes a specification of the fingerprint format in section 11.2. Identifier uniqueness considerations: The OpenPGP designers have gone to great lengths to ensure that their fingerprints will have as few collisions as possible. After that, the space is partitioned such that each keyholder is responsible for respecting the uniqueness rules. Identifier persistence considerations Since documents identified by this URN namespace can be digitally signed and easily verified, they can continue to be mirrored and redistributed around the network with no loss in authenticity. Process for identifier resolution: Not applicable. Validation mechanism: Valid URNs in this namespace will match this regular expression: urn:pgp:[0-9A-F]+: followed by any series of valid URI characters. 3. Examples The following examples are not guaranteed to be real URNs. They are simply examples of syntactically valid ones under this scheme. urn:pgp:4FAC4838B7D8D13FA6D92EDB4145521E79F0DF4B:bob/joe?sally=sue urn:pgp:6D3A1FA30AE5B634E484E0EBF7177452:2002/05/07/borkingPoint 4. IANA Considerations This document calls for registration of a new URN namespace, according to the registration template in section 2. References Swartz Expires January 6, 2003 [Page 4] Internet-Draft A URN Namespace for PGP Users July 2002 [1] Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R. and P. Faltstrom, "URN Namespace Definition Mechanisms", BCP 33, RFC 2611, June 1999. [2] Callas, J., Donnerhacke, L., Finney, H. and R. Thayer, "OpenPGP Message Format", RFC 2440, November 1998. Author's Address Aaron Swartz AaronSw.com 349 Marshman Highland Park, IL 60035 USA Phone: +1 847 432 8857 EMail: me@aaronsw.com URI: http://www.aaronsw.com/ Swartz Expires January 6, 2003 [Page 5] Internet-Draft A URN Namespace for PGP Users July 2002 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Swartz Expires January 6, 2003 [Page 6]