subkeys on smartcard?

Hauke Laging mailinglisten at hauke-laging.de
Wed Jun 26 15:30:25 CEST 2013


Am Mi 26.06.2013, 15:10:19 schrieb Daniel Pocock:

> Essentially, can anyone confirm why it is recommended to only store
> subkeys on a smart card?

That has little to do with smartcards. Mainkeys should always be stored and 
used safely ("offline"). Smartcards are typically used in an unsafe 
environment. If the mainkey is on the card then it can easily be accessed by 
an attacker. The key cannot be stolen but be abused.

Highly secure mainkeys are the last line of defense. If even they are 
potentially compromised there is nothing left to trust.


Hauke
-- 
☺
PGP: 7D82 FB9F D25A 2CE4 5241 6C37 BF4B 8EEF 1A57 1DF5 (seit 2012-11-04)
http://www.openpgp-courses.org/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 572 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: </pipermail/attachments/20130626/227808e8/attachment.sig>


More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list