Mailing-List: contact user-help@couchdb.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: user@couchdb.apache.org
Received-SPF: pass (athena.apache.org: domain of antony.blakey@gmail.com
 designates 209.85.200.171 as permitted sender)
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
        d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
        h=message-id:from:to:in-reply-to:content-type
         :content-transfer-encoding:mime-version:subject:date:references
         :x-mailer;
        b=Ckxga4lB0XY2T0RLz2iGYuDkl83oLacPwx+hF6i5lt5mn1nFSy6fYuE2OT1p1Wi6Cb
         fhaIxGkANi3KktPaih6oh9wr5RTiolXEk7LkS5Pv63Cw2+zPafZdzVHlZdU9aqh8KvVO
         V2vD/IHNU6ThBgawrm4mMeEt8wifVvlpN2q6k=
Message-Id: <55679AE8-0200-40B9-AC7D-0249E4FECC3B@gmail.com>
From: Antony Blakey <antony.blakey@gmail.com>
To: user@couchdb.apache.org
In-Reply-To: <20090309002113.GD361@tumbolia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v930.3)
Subject: Re: Proposal for digital signatures of documents
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 10:58:02 +1030
References: <283A6EDD-6701-4A6A-88AE-8B97E6D11D9E@mooseyard.com>
 <B9C0BDBB-27A5-45C8-9CBF-A3506EB3FB13@gmail.com>
 <20090309002113.GD361@tumbolia.org>


On 09/03/2009, at 10:51 AM, Noah Slater wrote:

> What does canonicalisation have to do with crypto signing procedures?

 From Jen's proposal:

> Moreover, the same JSON object can be represented by different  
> sequences of bytes, since key/value pairs may be rearranged,  
> whitespace added or removed, and different encodings used. It's  
> possible for the byte representation to change in transit, if the  
> document is parsed into a data structure and then re-serialized.  
> This would prevent the recipient from being able to verify the  
> signature. So the signature has to be generated from a canonical  
> representationof the JSON, which we can define as:

Antony Blakey
-------------
CTO, Linkuistics Pty Ltd
Ph: 0438 840 787

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever  
that it is not utterly absurd.
   -- Bertrand Russell