The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Aumont <address@concealed>]

About PGP encryption into Sympa Rene Pfeiffer wrote:

> 
>  - public keys are used for encryption
>  - the list server should encrypt the message
>    a) individually to every list member
This is what Sympa is doing with S/MIME encryption.
>    b) or to all list member
>  - the list server should have the ability to retrieve subscriber's public
>    keys from keyservers
This is not yet coded for Sympa S/MIME feature.
>  - the list server should be able to receive public keys from subscribers
>    and relay them to a local keyserver
>  - every mailing list should have its own public key for posting messages
Of course this two last item are in Sympa S/MIME.
> 
> Did anyone of the SYMPA users or developers think of such a scenario? Is
> this feasible? Did someone do some experiments? The lists of this kind would
> operate with a small number of users (let's say a few hundred). The list
> manager could use public keys from a dedicated keyserver nearby.

Some ask us about this and our answer is "do it your self". We can help
developpers that want to do it describing the Sympa encryption
internals. It should be easy to do because the code is ready to receive
this pluggin. The main task is to developp in the tool.pl four new
subroutines
pgp_sign, pgp_encrypt, pgp_verify and pgp_decrypt which should look like
the 4 subroutines related to S/MIME (use the same parameters). If some
one do it we will integrate thoses subroutines into Sympa code. In my
opinion, the signature is more usefull then the encryption. 

Some gui tell me that PGP/MIME is not yet in use so there is a need to
use tex/plain structure for PGP features, Is this true ? This may impact
Sympa MIME capabilities.

Of course, some restriction still remain in the PGP solution : 

- http authentication can't be based on PGP where X509 certificat
provide it with HTTPS.
- both S/MIME and PGP encryption can't be used if subscribers do not
trust into the listmaster.

Serge
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Serge Aumont        Comité Réseaux des Universités
                     Campus Beaulieu 
                     35042 Rennes Cedex