Starting with gnupg

[Jean-David Beyer]

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John W. Moore III wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> 
> 
>> But if he somehow got your private key, I do not believe he
>> would need your passphrase.
> 
> YES!  S/He _would_ need the passphrase even if in possession of the
> Private/Secret Key.  The passphrase is the "key" that unlocks the Secret
> Key which is why there is so much emphasis placed on making sure Your
> passphrase is a strong one that cannot easily be guessed or 'Social
> Engineered'.
> 
> Should an adversary come into possession of the Secret Key they would
> then need to brute force attack the passphrase.  <SIGH>
> 
You would certainly need the passphrase to get at the contents of
secring.gpg. But if I got the secret key from there, would I still need the
passphrase? I.e., does the passphrase control access to the _keyring_ or the
_key itself_? I suppose I should look it up in the RFC 4880.

- --
  .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
  /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
 /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
 ^^-^^ 08:45:01 up 11:37, 4 users, load average: 5.03, 4.38, 4.30
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