RFC Errata
RFC 4880, "OpenPGP Message Format", November 2007
Note: This RFC has been obsoleted by RFC 9580
Note: This RFC has been updated by RFC 5581
Source of RFC: openpgp (sec)
Errata ID: 2203
Status: Rejected
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Constantin Hagemeier
Date Reported: 2010-04-28
Rejected by: Sean Turner
Date Rejected: 2010-07-20
Section 4.4.2. says:
1. A one-octet Body Length header encodes packet lengths of up to 191 octets. 2. A two-octet Body Length header encodes packet lengths of 192 to 8383 octets. 3. A five-octet Body Length header encodes packet lengths of up to 4,294,967,295 (0xFFFFFFFF) octets in length. (This actually encodes a four-octet scalar number.) 4. When the length of the packet body is not known in advance by the issuer, Partial Body Length headers encode a packet of indeterminate length, effectively making it a stream.
It should say:
1. A one-octet Body Length header encodes packet body lengths of up to 191 octets. 2. A two-octet Body Length header encodes packet body lengths of 192 to 8383 octets. 3. A five-octet Body Length header encodes packet body lengths of up to 4,294,967,295 (0xFFFFFFFF) octets in length. (This actually encodes a four-octet scalar number.) 4. When the length of the packet body is not known in advance by the issuer, Partial Body Length headers encode a packet of indeterminate length, effectively making it a stream.
Notes:
The packet consists of header and body. The encoded length is the length
of the packet body.
--VERIFIER NOTES--
The language is clear in the document. The Body Length refers to the length of the body. Colloquially, the document calls this the packet length, but OpenPGP is hardly unique in being a TLV record system in which the length is the length of the value, not of the Tag, Length, and Value.