Revocation

[Ingo Klöcker]

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On Saturday 22 December 2001 20:33, Richard B. Tilley (Brad) wrote:
> Hello freedom loving GNUpg users!
>
> I have a revoke.asc file in case something should ever happen to my
> secret key. Is it a good idea to encrypt the revoke.asc file? Could
> encrypting it with the key it is meant to revoke cause problems? I
> store revoke.asc in my .gnupg directory. I do not want to print it
> out on paper.

It's a very bad idea to encrypt the revoke.asc file because if you ever 
loose your secret key or forget the passphrase you'll never be able to 
revoke the corresponding key pair afterwards because you won't be able 
to decrypt the revocation certificate.

The reason for creating a revocation certificate and storing it at a 
safe place (i.e. not on your hard disk but on paper or an external 
medium) directly after generating a new key pair is that this 
certificate will always allow you to revoke your key even if you loose 
your secret key for some reason (head crash, stolen PC, forgotten 
passphrase, etc.).

Regards,
Ingo
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