pinentry-qt and on-screen keyboards

[Jakob Bohm]

On 4/9/2025 23:57:24, Stuart Longland via Gnupg-users wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I recently bought a second hand Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 which is a 
> tablet form-factor PC.  I've loaded it with Debian 12 using the KDE 
> Plasma desktop (using X11 for now) and have `xvkbd` set up as a 
> virtual keyboard.
>
> It is important to note this machine has a single USB (USB3 type A) 
> port and *NO* hardware keyboard beyond a couple of macro buttons on 
> the bezel.
>
> pinentry, it seems, does not get along with xvkbd.  When I need to 
> unlock a private key, pinentry (I'm using pinentry-qt) blocks input 
> events from all other applications, including xvkbd.  I'm not sure the 
> situation would change if I used something else.
>
> While I can understand this on a standard keyboard-equipped computer 
> in normal circumstances, doing it on a touchscreen-driven tablet is 
> ridiculous.  I basically cannot use GnuPG at all on this computer 
> unless my keys are stored without a passphrase, which is demonstrably 
> worse security than pinentry preventing input to other applications.
>
> Is there a way to relax this restriction?

Ditto,

As someone who co-writes other tools that deal with the user terminal in 
"unexpected" ways, hardwired "features" that restrict terminal 
input/output to/from "sensitive" entry fields tend to be a PITA and a 
major problem when the actual user that needs to handle the secret has 
no access other than through something that such a "feature" blocks.

I have not had opportunity to test our tools with pinentry-qt yet, but 
thanks for the heads up about this misfeature.

Enjoy

Jakob
-- 
Jakob Bohm, CIO, Partner, WiseMo A/S.  https://www.wisemo.com
Transformervej 29, 2860 Søborg, Denmark.  Direct +45 31 13 16 10
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