On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 12:32:40PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > I think he's pointing out a more general problem.
Indeed. IIRC, the Mac keychain uses your login password as its passphrase by default, which means that to keep your keychain unlocked requires either keeping the password around (bad), keeping the keys in cleartext around (worse?), or prompting for the password/passphrase every time they are needed (unusable). This applies to ssh-agent, the GNOME keychain, etcetera. It also applies to distributed authentication systems with password-based options, like Kerberos. ISTM that keeping the password around (preferably in mlocked memory, and, to be sure, with swap encrypted with ephemeral keys) is probably the better solution. Of course, the keys themselves have to be handled with care too. Nico -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com