MD5 proposal

Hi Janos,

On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Janos Zsako wrote:
> >   From owner-db-wg at ripe.net Mon Mar 25 13:26:38 2002
>
> Dear Andrei,
>
> >   Please find enclosed the MD5 proposal for your comments and suggestions.
>
> Great!
>
> One small comment, probably need for clarification.
>
> >   When submitting an update to the database that needs to be authorised using
> >   this scheme, a "password:" pseudo-attribute must be used to submit a key
> >   (passphrase). Line continuation is not allowed for this attribute, so the
> >   whole key should fit on one line.
>
> Let's suppose I send in a message with
> password:   Hello
> (note the three spaces).
>
> It is not clear to me where the passphrase would start. I can think of
> two valid approaches:
> 1. At the first character after the first white space (space or tab)
> following the colon (":") (in my example the passphrase would be then
> "  Hello").
> 2. At the first non-whitespace character after the colon (in which case
> the passphrase would be "Hello").
>
> I think I would vote for the second approach which is more intuitive
> to me. BTW: how does this work with CRYPT-PW? I would think it is the
> second approach.

Yes, the current approach is the second one. This implicitely
prohibits the use of white space as the first characters of the
password but probably this is less confusing for the users then
having the behaviour you defined in 1.


>
> Best regards,
> Janos
>
> PS: I apologize if this is specified somewhere.

I don't think this is documented. We'll make sure it will
be in the user manual, and in reference document if
necessary.

Best regards,

Engin Gunduz
RIPE NCC Database Group