back signatures

Christoph Anton Mitterer cam at mathematica.scientia.net
Sun Nov 6 21:54:01 CET 2005


David Shaw wrote:

>>It's a countermeasure against an attack against signing subkeys.
>>Basically, the primary key signs all subkeys.  With backsigs, the
>>signing subkey also signs the primary key.
>>
>>Without this, an attacker can "steal" a signing subkey from someone
>>else and try and pretend that a signature came from his own key.  It's
>>not a particularly good attack: the attacker can't issue signatures to
>>prove his ownership.
>>    
>>
>I should add that this is a new feature for 1.4.3.
>  
>
Can keys created before 1.4.3 be updated with that stuff?

Best wishes,
Chris.
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