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Re: gpg: secret key without public key - skipped



Vineet Kumar <debian-user@virtual.doorstop.net> [2002-08-15 18:13:31 -0700]:
> Theoretically, the public key can be generated from teh secret key.  I
> don't know how to ask gpg to do that, though.  Maybe you can ask in a
> more gnupg-specific forum.

Uh, pardon me?  Actually no.  Theoretically yes.  But practically no.
That is the whole point of encryption.  It is not practical to decrypt
encrypted text.  Theoretically however I agree it is possible.

Let's look at the problem another way.  If by having one key you could
generate the other key then anyone could generate your private key
from your public key.  And since the public key is public then no
one's private key would be safe.  But since people don't do that it is
probably because they can't.  It is a symmetrical problem.

Sleep, sleeeeep, you need sleeep...  :-)

Bob

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