Question about use of --cipher-algo AES & --openpgp

[Peter S. May]

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Henry Hertz Hobbit wrote:
> It is a worthwhile and at a much higher value than two cents, but I
> was NOT thinking of a new program. I was thinking of the magic number
> and the "file" command.  Evidently, OpenPGP is totally incompatible
> with that and always will be.  At least I can't see a way to make it
> fit. If you can, be my guest. It would require enumerating all of the
> possibilities and putting in ALL of them, but being careful you don't
> clobber something else in the process.

I don't know how the internals of "file" work.  If I were trying to get
a generic file-like program to grok OpenPGP, here's probably how I'd go
about it:

* If the first non-blank line started "--- BEGIN PGP ", it would
probably be reasonable to call it armored OpenPGP and perhaps look into
it further, to figure out a subtype.
* If the file program decides the file isn't any other type it
recognizes, take a look at the first byte of the file, which must be a
valid OpenPGP packet tag.  You could run some or all of these tests
before passing the file on to GPGME, which would ultimately determine a
file's reasonable OpenPGP compatibility.  Some assumptions based on bis-18:

(in pseudocode, of course)

function is_pgp_packet_tag (byte)
  if byte & 0xC0 == 0xC0  // new format tag
    tag_number = byte & 0x3f
  else if byte & 0xC0 == 0x80 // old format tag
    tag_number = (byte & 0x3c) >> 2
  else
    return false // first bit is always set

  if tag_number == 0
    return false  // 0 is reserved

  // the rest of the assumptions may change with future
  // versions of the spec and need to be kept up to date
  if tag_number == 15 or tag_number == 16
    return false  // 15 and 16 are not currently defined
  if tag_number >= 20
    return false
    // Values 20 to 59 are not currently defined
    // Values 60 to 63 are defined as private and GPG can't grok them

After those checks, I would either pass the file on to GPGME or run one
more heuristic first:  Read a packet header.  If it's valid, extract the
length it specifies and jump forward that many bytes.  Then repeat.  If
any of the tags are !is_pgp_packet_tag(), or if the last length
specifier you find leads you past the end of the file, it's not OpenPGP.
 Else, it has a significant chance of being formally correct.

Might be too complicated a check for file, but I think it would work.

PSM
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