[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#829366: doesn't allow for creation of keys with 90-year expiry

[Robert Edmonds]

Luke Faraone wrote:
> Creating a key that expires in 89 years correctly sets an expiry of 2105, but
> attempting to set an expiry of 90 years or greater results in an expirty date
> that wraps around to 1970.
> 
> Curiously, the time on such wrapped-around expiries is always 13:09:41.

This is the Y2106 problem: representing a timestamp using an *unsigned*
32-bit integer number of seconds since the Unix epoch only allows
representing ~136 years since 1970. If you use a *signed* 32-bit integer
you get the more famous Y2038 problem.

There are other instances of the Y2106 bug in the archive, e.g. BIND's
struct isc_time also represents seconds since the epoch with an unsigned
int.

-- 
Robert Edmonds
edmonds at debian.org