Re: [Sks-devel] exchange of ideas

[brent s.]

On 3/22/19 4:50 PM, fuat wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> Is it a security threat to keep public keys in the sks database in the
> directory as an .asc file?
> 
> Can it be done? Why can not be done?
> 
> What are the advantages and disadvantages?
> 
> I'd appreciate it if you sent me your ideas.
> 

A *security* threat? As long as it's the public key, no.

But you don't really gain anything but problems from it, because:

- the ASCII-armored version of a key takes up more bytes in storage than
the binary format (this is true of any binary => BASE64 conversion,
especially with the headers that ASCII-armored format includes)

- the ASCII-armored version would need to be converted to binary anyways
to properly be parsed by the underlying library (someone fact-check me
on this, I'm about 80% certain on this)

- the underlying library can convert to ASCII-armored anyways for
rendering to clients that request it


-- 
brent saner
https://square-r00t.net/
GPG info: https://square-r00t.net/gpg-info

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