gpg: WARNING: unsafe ownership on configuration file "/home/jason/.gnupg/gpg.conf"

[David Shaw]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 07:41:39PM -0500, Jason Wallwork wrote:
> Received the warning message:
> gpg: WARNING: unsafe ownership on configuration file 
> "/home/jason/.gnupg/gpg.conf"
> 
> after running gpg --version as root. I don't get the warning if I run the same 
> command as a regular user.
> 
> Here's the permissions on the file:
> 
> jason at starbuck:~> ls -l .gnupg/gpg.conf
> -rw-------  1 jason users 8565 2005-03-17 12:43 .gnupg/gpg.conf
> 
> Should I be concerned? I can't find this in the FAQ. I hope it's not a case of 
> not looking hard enough. :-/

It means that the user you are running GPG as was not the owner of the
gpg.conf file.  That can be a security problem (as someone other than
you can manipulate it), so GPG is warning you about it.

Since you're running as root on purpose, it's presumably not a
security problem, but GPG doesn't know that.

David