All my Passwords are lost

Marek Stepanek mstep at podiuminternational.org
Sat Apr 24 12:11:38 CEST 2021


Hello all,

Perhaps somebody out there could be of some help. I use since 10 years now GnuPG in my Shell to encrypt my Passwords. I only open this file, from time to time to look up some pws which I need for banking, crypto or to check, which of my many mails I used on which webpage. 

After use I remove the pw.txt file immediately with my shell. All what is left is the file pw.txt.gpg. 

Now after such a long time, something strange happened: this file is apparently encrypted with a foreign private key, which I never have had: 

gpg: WARNING: no command supplied.  Trying to guess what you mean ...
gpg: encrypted with 2048-bit ELG key, ID 1F1EF0849B5C6D50, created 2019-06-30
      "PAUSE Batch Signing Key 2021 <pause at pause.perl.org>"
gpg: decryption failed: No secret key

I would be *VERY* grateful for any help in:

1. Recover the original file pw.tx. This file I remove in my shell and for me, it seems impossible to recover this file. Right? And I am sure: I have even a SSD on my 2018 MB Pro. Which makes it even much more improbable, to recover the decrypted pw-file.

2. If the file is mistakenly encrypted with wrong headers from perl.org <http://perl.org/>, perhaps it would be possible to change the headers to my private gpg key? I see in the pw.txt.gpg file <85> … <8c> … <91> which could be headers. If I replace some of them with a backup - two month old from a still working bu_pw.txt.pgg file? 

3. As a last resort: is the private key of pause at pause.perl.org <mailto:pause at pause.perl.org> still in use? Would it possible to … ok ok private key … ok ok not possible … I understand. 

Some ideas? Thank you for your insight


Marek Stepanek
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