----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Kitterman" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "IETF-Discussion Discussion" <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 4:15 AM > On Monday, October 13, 2014 21:35:56 John C Klensin wrote: > > --On Monday, 13 October, 2014 20:25 -0400 Scott Kitterman > > > > <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > I went back and looked at a random sampling of the PGP > > > encrypted mails I've received over the last couple of years. > > > 100% of them were multipart: > > > > > > Content-Type: multipart/encrypted; > > > > > > protocol="application/pgp-encrypted"; > > > > Interesting. We must be seeing different communities. Very > > subjectively, I'd guess that about half of the PGP encrypted > > (whether signed or not) and almost all of the > > signed-but-not-encrypted messages are in ASCII armored form, not > > multipart/encrypted. I have speculations about the reasons for > > both, but the bottom line in: > > > > -- multipart/encrypted isn't as successful as we had expected > > > > -- The ASCII armor format which, IIR, predates > > multipart/encryption and may make up part of the reason for > > Ned's observation that the PGP community didn't like MIME very > > much, is still alive an well. > > > > Ned is obviously correct -- ASCII armor doesn't do a thing for > > complex, structured, messages while multipart/encrypted was > > designed to handle them and does. But that fact has never > > eliminated the cases in which the message payload is a singe, > > text-style, body part and standalone PGP processors can created > > a signed and/or encrypted block of text that is then pasted into > > (really instead of) a conventional message. > > > > john > > Virtually everyone I'm getting encrypted/signed mail from is running Linux or > some other Unix like operating system and using GnuPG. That may account for > why I see what I see. I did go back and look at a few signed mails and they > are multipart as well: I agree on the multipart/signed but also see User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:33.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/33.0 or X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1878.6) or the tell tale Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="Apple-Mail=_37F6A3569C-4B34-48C7-8721-BF783436929"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 which look like other communities. Tom Petch > > Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp- > signature"; boundary="..." > Content-Disposition: inline > .... > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > Content-Disposition: inline > > ... > > Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Description: Digital signature > > YMMV, of course, but from where I sit at least it seems to be ~all one way. > > Scott K > >