on Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 10:57:53PM -0500, Harry Henry Gebel (hgebel@magpage.com) wrote: > On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 10:09:26PM -0500, Chris Gray wrote: > > >>>>> "kmself" == kmself <kmself@ix.netcom.com> writes: > > >> You're probably right about this (IANA security expert), but > > >> these should only be readable by root. Also, if you have a > > >> malicious root, your private key isn't going to be all that > > >> safe anyway. > > kmself> Well, on disk, your private key is secured by your > > kmself> passphrase (right?). > > I just did a 'less' on my secring.gpg, so... (remember the thread on > > the difficulty of password protecting a directory recently) > > I don't think that the private key is encrypted in any way. The fact > > that it has mode 0600 is seen as security enough. > > The mode is NOT seen as security enough. The private key is encrypted using > a symmetrical cipher whose key is derived from a hash of the > passphrase. (the exact cipher and hash can be specified in an S2K block in > the secret keyring) In other words, if you selected a very good passphrase > (this is a BIG if for most people) if is just as well encrypted as any gpg > encrypted message message. The reason people must not be allowed to read it > is that it gives attackers a single key to discover that can then be used > to recover ALL of the (symmetrical) keys used to encrypt messages with that > key, (and because most people choose poor passwords discovering that one > key would not be hard for most people's keyrings. I am not sure what doing > 'less' on the keyring is supposed to indicate? Thanks, Harry. Ok, understanding that, why was I able to export my secret key without being prompted for a passphrase, or are the passphrase and key managed independently -- I can export the key but it's still no good without the passphrase? -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Zelerate, Inc. http://www.zelerate.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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