Gpg revocation anomaly

[David Shaw]

On Aug 17, 2012, at 6:19 PM, No such Client wrote:

> # Personally, I was under the impression that even you do *not* have the
> designated revoker key in your k-ring, that a valid revocation signature
> is still binding to revoke the key. If alice revokes bob´s key, and
> charlie has alice´s pubkey, but david, eric, and frank all don´t... that
> doesnt matter.. Bobs key is still revoked by alice. They can just see
> the keyid that revoked it..

That is not the case.  Like any other signature, the only way to verify a revocation signature is to use the public key of the key that issued the signature.  Without Alice's key being present, how would David, Eric, and Frank know that the signature on Bob's key is a real revocation signature and not a forgery?

Note that David, Eric, and Frank will be warned about this.  If they import Bob's revoked key and not Alice's, they'll get a message like "WARNING: key (Bob's keyid) may be revoked: revocation key (Alice's keyid) not present"

David