Suggestions of standards added to openpgp/Gnupg/LibrePgp
Robert J. Hansen
rjh at sixdemonbag.org
Tue Mar 31 23:17:52 CEST 2026
> Shamirs secret has been around since 1979,- I find it odd that it is not
> included in Openpgp.
LibrePGP (not OpenPGP) has very little to say about how keys are stored,
accessed, or shared. It specifies a format by which keys can be output
by one application and input to another, but specifying a common
import/export format is pretty minimal.
> It could add things like distributed key custody, hardware enforced
> split custody. Right now,- if someone with a key leaves or dies
> important encrypted data gets lost.
No, because enterprises concerned about this use ADKs (which really
should be called ARRs, but I lost that battle a quarter-century ago).
> That would cause issues for any organization. It could also fix the
> plausible "only one person knows the password" to a " K of N can
> cooperate" situation.
So the sysadmin gets the private key, puts a strong 128-bit random
passphrase on it, and then uses any of the commonly-available
command-line Shamir implementations to do a K-of-N key breakup among the
junior sysadmins.
> That would also work for a encrypted file system,- split into parts.
> If a hardware token has , say 256 GB space.. Then it can be a part of a
> Shamirs secret scheme. 4 out of 6 keys could be used to recreate the
> shared encrypted file system on a empty drive.
Why not just use the drive's full capacity, encrypt it with a 256-bit
key, and use Shamir to do K-of-N on the key? This scheme seems wasteful.
And why do you need Shamir in LibrePGP in order to achieve this?
> Ephemeral signed elliptic curve diffie hellman is usable, because it
> will solve a forward security issue.
So far you don't appear to understand LibrePGP or Shamir very well. That
is not an insult: everybody starts off not knowing this stuff. But your
past track record so far makes me less willing to take your assertion on
faith than if you were Ron Rivest.
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