From: karn@qualcomm.com (Phil Karn)
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 20:07:09 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Signing ascii text
Message-ID: <9212230406.AA28094@servo>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I see some potential problems here as people start signing ASCII text
(e.g., email messages, etc). Is there a convention for the end of line
sequence that is to be used for the copy of the file that is run through
the hash function? If there isn't, then the file hash will depend on the
local end-of-line convention, which is bad.

I'm facing this problem right now in an experimental "XMD5" command that
I've added to my FTP server. The idea is to let you compute a hash on
a remote file so you can compare it with a local file without actually
having to send it. It works great in binary mode, but ascii mode is
problematic.

Phil