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Re: Digital signatures



Anthony Mapes [2015-12-27 09:03:22-05] wrote:

> I do have one question about the MIME version, though. I've seen
> mailing lists that add a footer to each message (in the form of a
> signature). With inline PGP, this footer gets appended after the
> signature block, and everything is wonderful. Would MIME work properly
> with that, since it doesn't seem to explicitly define the start and
> end of the signed message?

I didn't know the answer but I just checked one Mailman-managed mailing
list which adds a footer. In PGP/MIME messages (and probably any MIME
multipart messages) it adds another MIME layer (multipart/mixed). The
original multipart/signed is inside the first part and the mailing list
footer is the second part. At least Gnus and Mutt understand it and give
a "good signature". But I'm sure that old unmaintained mail clients
won't show it nicely.

Below is an example. See the different boundary strings for two
different layers.


    From:
    To:
    Date
    Subject:
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
        boundary="===============1041589328404701819=="

    --===============1041589328404701819==
    Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-=";
        micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"

    --=-=-=
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    The original message body here.

    --=-=-=
    Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    Version: GnuPG v1

    [...]
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
    --=-=-=--

    --===============1041589328404701819==
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
    Content-Disposition: inline

    Mailing list footer here.

    --===============1041589328404701819==--

-- 
/// Teemu Likonen   - .-..   <https://github.com/tlikonen> //
// PGP: 4E10 55DC 84E9 DFF6 13D7 8557 719D 69D3 2453 9450 ///

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature


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