Seperate RSA subkeys for decryption and signing or one for both?

[Hubert Kario]

On Monday 03 of December 2012 12:41:10 Hauke Laging wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> are there arguments for preferring either
> 
> a) having one RSA subkey for decryption only and one for signing only
> 
> or
> 
> b) having only one RSA subkey for both decryption and signing?
> 
> Do any problems arise with the smartcard if the same key shall do different
> tasks?

Keys can become "used up" so it entirely depends on how often you use it.

What I mean by that, is that any signing operation leaks some information 
about the key used for signing (generally far less than few tens of a bit).
If you have signed tens of thousands of documents with it, an attacker can 
recover substantial portion of the key and speed up the key recovery.

Regards,
-- 
Hubert Kario
QBS - Quality Business Software
02-656 Warszawa, ul. Ksawerów 30/85
tel. +48 (22) 646-61-51, 646-74-24
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