Does GPG Ever Store RSA Secret Keys On The Disk In Plain?

Novak Boškov boskov at bu.edu
Wed Dec 16 20:47:38 CET 2020


Hell everyone,

On this link
<https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/c481.html#:~:text=To%20help%20safeguard%20your%20key,passphrase%20to%20access%20the%20key.>
is the following statement:

> To help safeguard your key, GnuPG does not store your raw private key
> on disk. Instead it encrypts it using a symmetric encryption algorithm.
However, I'm not entirely clear on what happens when I do:
> gpg --export-secret-keys --armor <key_id>
Is the secret key block that appears on STDOUT my plain secret key or is
it its encrypted version?

Best regards,
Novak

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