Feature request for future OpenPGP card: force PIN

Peter Lebbing peter at digitalbrains.com
Fri Feb 8 11:09:40 CET 2013


Hello Werner and list,

I'd like to do a feature request for a new version of the OpenPGP card, whenever
such a new version would be designed.

The current OpenPGP cards have a "force signature PIN" flag which can be set so
only one signature is issued with one PIN entry. I'd like to request similar
flags for the other two keys on the card, the encryption key and the
authentication key.

To me, it seems that the rationale for such a flag on the authentication key is
the same as for the signature key; both are a form of signatures. However, I'm
not familiar with the rationale for adding the force signature PIN flag.

I think there's an obvious use case for not setting the "force PIN" flag on
decryption: if you're searching your mail archive for a certain string, and you
have lots of encrypted mails, not forcing the PIN will mean you only need to
enter the PIN once for the search. But offering the option to force the PIN for
each decryption just means people with this use case will not set the flag; it
does not get in their way.

I don't have a mail archive with encrypted mails. To me, decryption is just as
much a "once only" action as signatures. So I would personally set the "force
decryption PIN" flag for the same reasons I set the "force signature PIN" flag.

It seems to me this is a simple and harmless addition, so I hope it can be
accepted on the grounds that it is useful to some, not harmful to others and not
that much work. I hope I see that right.

I regret not doing this feature request between the card v1.1 and v2.0 :).

Peter.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at <http://digitalbrains.com/2012/openpgp-key-peter>



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