Keyring Storage

[David Shaw]

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On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 08:56:51PM -0400, Andrew James Barr wrote:
> I was wondering what the proper way to store a GPG or PGP secret keyring
> would be? I am talking about the ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg file in GPG and
> the .skr files in PGP (Windows). I have been backing these files up with
> a periodic homedir backup to a CD-R, which I just keep in a drawer with
> all my other CDs. Aren't the keys, when stored in these files, protected
> by of course the passphrase but not encryption as well? Please excuse
> any ignorance on my part but I have not been into encryption for that
> long.

The secret keys are stored encrypted on the keyring.  The passphrase
is used to decrypt them just before use.

It is possible to have no passphrase, and thus no encryption, but this
isn't recommended for obvious reasons.

David
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