what is the use of signing keys?

[Owen Blacker]

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Ingo Kl=F6cker wrote (2001-10-15 T 23:15 +0200):
>
> > > Why didn't you simply remove the encryption sub key after key
> > > creation?
> >
> > Makes a point.  Seeing it revoked at N seconds after creation is more
> > provable than it not being there, I'd guess.
>
> Only for stupid people because you could have easily added another
> encryption subkey and then removed this subkey when the police broke
> into your house. ;-)

You're right.  I'm stupid, the logic of this escaped me when I generated
my new keys this year.  Istr that last years was deleted before being
sent to the keyservers, rather than revoked.  If it's any excuse, I had
a head full of cold around the beginning of September  :/

> > > And why didn't you simply generate a DSA (sign only) key in the
> > > first place instead of a DSA/ElGamal key?
> >
> > Because the key was generated in PGP under Windows 2000 (which
> > doesn't, to my knowledge, provide such an option), as I find that key
> > generation is rather slow under the specific configuration of GnuPG
> > under FreeBSD 4.4-PRERELEASE to which I have access.
> >
> > I seem to recall that Werner has mentioned that the speed of GnuPG is
> > something on which he is working...
>
> He improved the speed of trust checking. AFAIK the key generation is
> still the same. If it's slow then I guess /dev/random is the culprit.
> Maybe this is slow on FreeBSD.

Signing is the slowest thing I've noticed, particularly on long messages
(so, presumably, it's the hashing algorithm that's the problem)  It is a
relatively overworked box I use, though...


O x
- --=20
Owen Blacker | Senior Software Developer and InfoSecurity Consultant
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
Sig  0x3e2056b9 | 18cd 92aa 32aa 81b9 f5e8  c520 6475 6239 3e20 56b9
- --
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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