Public Keyring Security

[Mark]

With the posts of backing up files and anonymous private keys it got me
thinking. Is there a mechanism in place that protects (encrypts) a
public keyring? They can be thought of as sort of an address book or
contact list and with some mail providers encrypting contacts I wondered
if such a thing existed with pgp keys? 

Obviously I know you can install it an encrypted volume (depending on
your OS) but was curious if the program or even the "pgp standard" took
that into consideration or am I just too bored and that it's a stupid idea?


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Re: "just invent something..."

[Ángel]

On 2020-05-24 at 00:14 -0400, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
> > I see a big hole in the validation part. The steps providex are
> > validating the offline identity but not matching it to the certificate
> > uid.
> 
> Correct, and that's by design.
> 
> There is no -- *NO* -- generally understood meaning for user IDs beyond
> "the name here is a meaningful term of address for an individual or
> individuals who control this email address".
> 
> Many years ago I was in Germany and tried to persuade a friend of mine
> to do the hard right thing as opposed to the easy wrong thing.  She
> rolled her eyes at me and declared "du bist Rob, der Ritter".  ("You're
> Rob, the knight.")  She was attempting to be sarcastic.  Bystanders
> misheard her as "du bist ein Raubritter" and a new nickname for me was
> born.[1]
> 
> So let's say I give you my ID and you're one of these people who knows
> me as Raubritter.  Would you sign raubrit...@sixdemonbag.org?  Probably.
>  Should you?  Sure, why not?  You know there's a specific person, me,
> who answers that email address and you know exactly who I am in the eyes
> of the law, thanks to seeing my ID.
> 
> So why shouldn't you sign a pseudonym, if you know the pseudonym maps to
> an individual person?  And if you're going to sign a pseudonym, why not
> sign donald_tr...@sixdemonbag.org if you happen to know there's a person
> or persons at that domain which answer to that name?
> 
> 
> 
> [1] This was thirty years ago.  Words tend to change their cultural and
> slang meanings over the years.  I don't know what the current
> implications of "Raubritter" are, and for that reason I don't use it or
> advertise it to others... but yeah, there are people who have known me
> for thirty years who still call me that.

I tried to cover that with
> unless it is the name he goes by in certain circles

The point is, if I met you as Raubritter, a government-issued id showing
a different name is unlikely to help.

Similarly, I remember a blog post written by Skud during the Nym wars,
where it was mentioned that being presented in conferences under the
legal name ‘Kirrily Robert’ tended to cause confusion. [1]


Of course, this leads to question if it would ever help to see such id.
I do think it can be helpful. There are cases where the other party is
known to use their legal name. Seeing an official id, and assuming it is
a legit one (would you correctly detect a fake id? even from a foreign
country?), doesn't stop that an impostor could appear with a valid id on
that name  (just like dealing with stripe doesn't mean it's the company
you really mean to [2], or you could live on many Bostons), but it
should restrict the odds somehow, by filtering the possibilities.
Remember, if we know the legal name beforehand (e.g. when verifying a
university email address, a tenured professor is unlikely _not_ to be
using their legal name, although publishing means that naming in
academia isn't straightforward either [3])

For online identities, a TOFU approach would probably work better. You
would want to link the identity with its good or bad interactions to the
cryptographic identity, regardless if who makes them is named Rob or
Dogbert.


For people you personally know -whatever the name-, you are probably
comfortable signing whatever name they used on their key, that's likely
how you know them and you may remember them.

However, that doesn't help much if you wanted t benefit from the WoT, as
the naming gets messy adding intermediate nodes between people.


Also, there are too many meanings given to a key signature. I would like
to have a standard set of notations with common meanings, so (in some
subset) we could all agree on what was meant.


Now, this is all quite complex to properly explain in a small FAQ entry,
focused to new users, and still be understood, I'm afraid.



Best regards




PS: I am no German speaker, so I have no idea what Raubritters are. Or
what would that term be used for 30 years ago, fwiw.



1- That site has fallen out of the internet and took a while to dig it
out, but I finally found it at
https://web.archive.org/web/2015190646/http://infotrope.net/bio/my-name/
for the background on the why for that page see 
https://web.archive.org/web/20121213001724/http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-google-plus/
2- https://scotthelme.co.uk/the-power-to-revoke-lies-with-the-ca/
3- https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/personal-name


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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

I forgot to mention there are 2 files in that gnupg directory that I'm
not sure the purpose of. I know private keys are stored in a directory
called private-keys-v1.d and public keys are stored in pubring.kbx. I do
have a file called PAPubring.gpg and PAsecring.gpg. They are only 111
and 113 bytes each so can't be holding much of anything.


Thanks

On 5/24/2020 12:57 PM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> I was thinking along the lines of backing up that entire directory into
>> an encrypted 7z file and then just having to remember the password to
>> that archive. I know there are other options maybe even some that use
>> biometrics to decrypt the database.
> Don't.  GnuPG puts things in that directory that are specific to your
> particular machine.  Most of these are harmless (lockfiles, etc.) but
> some are potentially harmful to share between installations.
>
> For instance, there's one file, "random_seed".  Werner says it's not a
> major concern, but I and many others have a flaming heebie-jeebies
> reaction to the idea of sharing a random number generator's seed file
> between two machines -- copying RNG state information is how *many,
> many, many* cryptosystems in history have been broken.
>
> Don't just back up the directory.  Only copy the files that are strictly
> necessary for operation.  Sherpa can help you with this.
>
>
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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

Sorry misspoke.. I should've said put those files you listed in an
encrypted archive. I will grab Sherpa later and see how it works.

Thanks


On 5/24/2020 12:57 PM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> I was thinking along the lines of backing up that entire directory into
>> an encrypted 7z file and then just having to remember the password to
>> that archive. I know there are other options maybe even some that use
>> biometrics to decrypt the database.
> Don't.  GnuPG puts things in that directory that are specific to your
> particular machine.  Most of these are harmless (lockfiles, etc.) but
> some are potentially harmful to share between installations.
>
> For instance, there's one file, "random_seed".  Werner says it's not a
> major concern, but I and many others have a flaming heebie-jeebies
> reaction to the idea of sharing a random number generator's seed file
> between two machines -- copying RNG state information is how *many,
> many, many* cryptosystems in history have been broken.
>
> Don't just back up the directory.  Only copy the files that are strictly
> necessary for operation.  Sherpa can help you with this.
>
>
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Re: Backup of Keys

[Robert J. Hansen]

> I was thinking along the lines of backing up that entire directory into
> an encrypted 7z file and then just having to remember the password to
> that archive. I know there are other options maybe even some that use
> biometrics to decrypt the database.

Don't.  GnuPG puts things in that directory that are specific to your
particular machine.  Most of these are harmless (lockfiles, etc.) but
some are potentially harmful to share between installations.

For instance, there's one file, "random_seed".  Werner says it's not a
major concern, but I and many others have a flaming heebie-jeebies
reaction to the idea of sharing a random number generator's seed file
between two machines -- copying RNG state information is how *many,
many, many* cryptosystems in history have been broken.

Don't just back up the directory.  Only copy the files that are strictly
necessary for operation.  Sherpa can help you with this.


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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

I was thinking along the lines of backing up that entire directory into
an encrypted 7z file and then just having to remember the password to
that archive. I know there are other options maybe even some that use
biometrics to decrypt the database.

On 5/24/2020 10:23 AM, Peter Lebbing wrote:
> On 24/05/2020 19:11, Mark wrote:
>> I think if all the important files are stored in an encrypted
>> container, they should be pretty secure.
> Just watch out for the catch-22 of "I lost my hard drive, let me restore
> from that encrypted container. Hmmm, my only backup of my private key is
> inside a container encrypted to that private key..."
>
> HTH,
>
> Peter.
>

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

Good point, unless you can use some other passwordless authentication.

On 5/24/2020 10:44 AM, Felix Finch wrote:
> On 20200524, Mark wrote:
>> I think that could be addressed if all those files and directories are
>> stored within an encrypted archive (whatever your favorite is)
>
> Yes, but then that needs a passphrase, and so on.  I'm trying to cut
> back on how many I have to remember.
>

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Re: MacOSX help - beginner installation, first time

[Ángel]

On 2020-05-23 at 03:42 -0400, Cyrus Segura via Gnupg-users wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> 
> I'm new to GnuPG. I'm trying to install it for MacOSX, and I have a
> beginner's question.
> 
> 
> ***Do I need to verify more information about the validity of GnuPG
> if:
> 
> 
> 1.) The SHA-256 checksum on my Mac's Terminal matches the one on
> SourceForge where the Mac installer (.dmg) file is?
> 
> 
> 2.) The Mac installer (.dmg) and the Mac signature for the installer
> (.dmg.sig) are both verified on my Mac's separate program "GPG
> Suite" (made by "https://gpgtools.org/";)?
> 
> 
> ***The files in question are "GnuPG-2.2.20.dmg",
> "GnuPG-2.2.20.dmg.sig", and "Enigmail_public_key.asc". The link for
> the Mac downloads is "https://sourceforge.net/p/gpgosx/docu/Download/";
> 
> 
> Thank you very much for your time!
> 
> Cyrus


What's your threat model?
What are the capabilities of an attacker? Are they able to modify the
files you are being showed? (maybe by compromising the sourceforge page,
or tampering with your connection)


Let's suppose you verified the dmg file GnuPG-2.2.20.dmg has SHA-256
39970099819616d4b66a4e471ce26db97384948d0f375e02aae9d9de1d69baa5

You downloaded Enigmail_public_key.asc and checked it has fingerprint
4F9F 89F5 505A C1D1 A260  631C DB11 87B9 DD5F 693B

You performed this checks with programs known to be honest (a
hard-to-prove problem on its own, we probably take that as an axiom).


The values above are those I am being shown there. If they match those
you view, that suggest either:
* your connection is not tampered with (you are shown the same as me)
* those values are tampered on its source. It's hard that both your and
my connection are tampered by the same actor, but perhaps they modified
the web server.
* I sent you the correct values I was seeing, but that malicious actor
changed them before/after they arrived into your inbox. 
* I am part of the cabal that is trying to foil you into accepting those
malicious files


Even if those you got are the 'real' files, that only means those are
the ones produced by Patrick Brunschwig. Do you trust him? Do you trust
all the code he used to produce that package? Do you trust the build
machine or his key wasn't compromised?


Best regards


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Re: Backup of Keys

[Felix Finch]

On 20200524, Mark wrote:

I think that could be addressed if all those files and directories are
stored within an encrypted archive (whatever your favorite is)


Yes, but then that needs a passphrase, and so on.  I'm trying to cut back on 
how many I have to remember.

--
   ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & wood chipper / fe...@crowfix.com
 GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Felix Finch]

On 20200524, Peter Lebbing wrote:

Hi,

On 24/05/2020 16:05, Felix Finch wrote:

Out of curiosity ... how safe are these files as is, assuming the
private key file has a good strong passphrase?


The safety of the private key purely depends on the strength of the
passphrase. Note that backups will have the passphrase that was set when
the backup was _made_. Changing the passphrase on your computer will not
change the passphrase in any older backups.

But there is more data in your GnuPG homedir that is not encrypted but
is privacy-sensitive. If you ever assign someone ownertrust, that will
be reflected there. It indicates how much you trust people to correctly
verify other people's identities and how well you trust them to keep
their private key private. Your brother-in-law might be offended by you
assigning him "NEVER TRUST", and your partner might not appreciate you
apparently having somewhat recently assigned positive trust to that ex
you swore you never saw anymore.

And then there is the history data for TOFU, which exposes some data
about when you verified signatures by other people or when you encrypted
something to someone. This data is there to help you analyse
trustworthiness about the third party in question when so prompted, but
it is also communication metadata about you.

These pieces of data might not exist for your particular configuration,
but they can exist.


How hard is it to crack a good passphrase?


I think the definition of a good passphrase is that it is infeasible to
crack it. That makes it circular reasoning.

A well-executed "Correct Horse Battery Staple" passphrase or a long
enough diceware passphrase cannot be cracked. The problem is determining
whether you did it right or are misunderstanding some vital detail of
creating a good passphrase.

For instance, actually choosing "Correct Horse Battery Staple" is about
the worst thing you can do... :-)


Yes, it does.  My passphrase is about ten words which only make sense to me, 
not even to people who know me, are not grammatically correct, etc.

--
   ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & wood chipper / fe...@crowfix.com
 GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Peter Lebbing]

On 24/05/2020 19:11, Mark wrote:
> I think if all the important files are stored in an encrypted
> container, they should be pretty secure.

Just watch out for the catch-22 of "I lost my hard drive, let me restore
from that encrypted container. Hmmm, my only backup of my private key is
inside a container encrypted to that private key..."

HTH,

Peter.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at 



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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

I think that could be addressed if all those files and directories are
stored within an encrypted archive (whatever your favorite is)

On 5/24/2020 7:05 AM, Felix Finch wrote:
> On 20200524, Damien Goutte-Gattat via Gnupg-users wrote:
>> On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 09:35:54PM -0700, Mark wrote:
>>> I'm trying to figure out which files I need to backup to safeguard
>>> my keys.
>>
>> Everything that needs to be saved is in GnuPG’s home directory, which
>> on Windows should be `C:\Documents and
>> Settings\\Application Data\gnupg`. In that folder you
>> should save:
>>
>> * the private keys (in the `private-keys-v1.d` subfolder;
>> * the public keys (the `pubring.kbx` file);
>> * the trust data (the `trustdb.gpg` file, plus the `tofu.db` file of
>> you are using the TOFU trust model);
>> * any configuration file (`*.conf`);
>> * if you are using GpgSM, the `policies.txt` and `trustlist.txt` files.
>
> Out of curiosity ... how safe are these files as is, assuming the
> private key file has a good strong passphrase?  If they are backed up
> on a USB stick which gets lost and found by someone else, or stolen,
> how much damage can be done?  How hard is it to crack a good
> passphrase?  I realize that's kind of a loose question, and "strong
> passphrase" doesn't help.
>

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

Interesting points... I'm not sure I have all those files such as the
TOFU (have to actually read more about it).  I think if all the
important files are stored in an encrypted container, they should be
pretty secure.

On 5/24/2020 9:16 AM, Peter Lebbing wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 24/05/2020 16:05, Felix Finch wrote:
>> Out of curiosity ... how safe are these files as is, assuming the
>> private key file has a good strong passphrase?
> The safety of the private key purely depends on the strength of the
> passphrase. Note that backups will have the passphrase that was set when
> the backup was _made_. Changing the passphrase on your computer will not
> change the passphrase in any older backups.
>
> But there is more data in your GnuPG homedir that is not encrypted but
> is privacy-sensitive. If you ever assign someone ownertrust, that will
> be reflected there. It indicates how much you trust people to correctly
> verify other people's identities and how well you trust them to keep
> their private key private. Your brother-in-law might be offended by you
> assigning him "NEVER TRUST", and your partner might not appreciate you
> apparently having somewhat recently assigned positive trust to that ex
> you swore you never saw anymore.
>
> And then there is the history data for TOFU, which exposes some data
> about when you verified signatures by other people or when you encrypted
> something to someone. This data is there to help you analyse
> trustworthiness about the third party in question when so prompted, but
> it is also communication metadata about you.
>
> These pieces of data might not exist for your particular configuration,
> but they can exist.
>
>> How hard is it to crack a good passphrase?
> I think the definition of a good passphrase is that it is infeasible to
> crack it. That makes it circular reasoning.
>
> A well-executed "Correct Horse Battery Staple" passphrase or a long
> enough diceware passphrase cannot be cracked. The problem is determining
> whether you did it right or are misunderstanding some vital detail of
> creating a good passphrase.
>
> For instance, actually choosing "Correct Horse Battery Staple" is about
> the worst thing you can do... :-)
>
> HTH,
>
> Peter.
>
>
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Re: Backup of Keys

[Robert J. Hansen]

> I have yet to try it but it sounds like a good idea. Does it run under
> Windows 10?

Let's see what I wrote:

>> The Windows MSI installer should still work, though.

Knock yourself out.

https://github.com/rjhansen/sherpa/releases/download/0.4.0/sherpa-0.4.0.msi

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

Thanks for all the tips on which files to backup and how to export to
for use in other apps (which is another thing I want to do later). MANY
years ago (mid 90s) I created some PGP keys with the old Norton PGP
program I was beta testing... Unfortunately those private keys are long
lost (several computers ago) and have no idea where any backups of them
are. Learning from my mistake here so want to make sure I have backups
of what I need. Yes I am using GnuPG 2.2 as part of GPG4Win and Enigmail.

I will take a look at if I have all those files, some don't look
familiar plus take a look at that Sherpa program


On 5/24/2020 5:52 AM, Damien Goutte-Gattat wrote:
> On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 09:35:54PM -0700, Mark wrote:
>> I'm sure this is a pretty stupid question
>
> No, it’s not.
>
>
>> I'm trying to figure out which files I need to backup to safeguard my
>> keys.
>
> I’m assuming you are using GnuPG 2.2 on Windows here (based on your
> User-Agent).
>
> Everything that needs to be saved is in GnuPG’s home directory, which
> on Windows should be `C:\Documents and Settings\\Application
> Data\gnupg`. In that folder you should save:
>
> * the private keys (in the `private-keys-v1.d` subfolder;
> * the public keys (the `pubring.kbx` file);
> * the trust data (the `trustdb.gpg` file, plus the `tofu.db` file of
> you are using the TOFU trust model);
> * any configuration file (`*.conf`);
> * if you are using GpgSM, the `policies.txt` and `trustlist.txt` files.
>
> For the private and public keys however, instead of saving the files
> directly I’d recommend exporting them from GnuPG:
>
> % gpg -o private-keys.gpg --export-secret-keys
> % gpg -o public-keys.gpg  --export
>
> The rationale for doing so is that the exported files are in the
> standard OpenPGP format, from which you can re-import them without
> worrying about changes from one GnuPG version to another. To restore:
>
> % gpg --import private-keys.gpg
> % gpg --import public-keys.gpg
>
> (You can also do that with a graphical interface, of course.)
>
> Of note, there is also a much simpler option which could replace
> everything above: use the Sherpa tool [1], which does exactly what you
> need. It backs up a complete GnuPG profile into an archive and later
> allows you to restore it. Do mind the warning about Sherpa not being
> “ready for regular users”, though. For what it’s worth, I’ve used it a
> few times and never had any issues with it.
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> - Damien
>
>
> [1] https://github.com/rjhansen/sherpa

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Mark]

I have yet to try it but it sounds like a good idea. Does it run under
Windows 10?

On 5/24/2020 9:18 AM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> But using Sherpa is probably a good bet.
> Good Lord, it's been a while since I wrote that.  The Windows MSI
> installer should still work, though.  If there's interest in other
> formats, I'll see about updating it.
>
>
>
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Re: Backup of Keys

[Peter Lebbing]

On 24/05/2020 18:03, Peter Lebbing wrote:
>> % gpg -o public-keys.gpg  --export

Oh! That is perhaps not good enough :-). You need

$ gpg --export-options export-local-sigs -o public-keys.gpg --export

so you don't lose any non-exportable signatures. There's also
--export-options backup, which implies export-local-sigs. I just tested
that because I did not know. So I think for backup purposes this is the
best:

$ gpg --export-options backup -o public-keys.gpg --export

Check the manual for more --export-options.

HTH,

Peter.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at 



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Re: Backup of Keys

[Robert J. Hansen]

> But using Sherpa is probably a good bet.

Good Lord, it's been a while since I wrote that.  The Windows MSI
installer should still work, though.  If there's interest in other
formats, I'll see about updating it.




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Re: Backup of Keys

[Peter Lebbing]

Hi,

On 24/05/2020 16:05, Felix Finch wrote:
> Out of curiosity ... how safe are these files as is, assuming the
> private key file has a good strong passphrase?

The safety of the private key purely depends on the strength of the
passphrase. Note that backups will have the passphrase that was set when
the backup was _made_. Changing the passphrase on your computer will not
change the passphrase in any older backups.

But there is more data in your GnuPG homedir that is not encrypted but
is privacy-sensitive. If you ever assign someone ownertrust, that will
be reflected there. It indicates how much you trust people to correctly
verify other people's identities and how well you trust them to keep
their private key private. Your brother-in-law might be offended by you
assigning him "NEVER TRUST", and your partner might not appreciate you
apparently having somewhat recently assigned positive trust to that ex
you swore you never saw anymore.

And then there is the history data for TOFU, which exposes some data
about when you verified signatures by other people or when you encrypted
something to someone. This data is there to help you analyse
trustworthiness about the third party in question when so prompted, but
it is also communication metadata about you.

These pieces of data might not exist for your particular configuration,
but they can exist.

> How hard is it to crack a good passphrase?

I think the definition of a good passphrase is that it is infeasible to
crack it. That makes it circular reasoning.

A well-executed "Correct Horse Battery Staple" passphrase or a long
enough diceware passphrase cannot be cracked. The problem is determining
whether you did it right or are misunderstanding some vital detail of
creating a good passphrase.

For instance, actually choosing "Correct Horse Battery Staple" is about
the worst thing you can do... :-)

HTH,

Peter.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at 



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Re: Backup of Keys

[Peter Lebbing]

On 24/05/2020 14:52, Damien Goutte-Gattat via Gnupg-users wrote:
> No, it’s not.

Absolutely not ;-)

> For the private and public keys however, instead of saving the files
> directly I’d recommend exporting them from GnuPG:
> 
> % gpg -o private-keys.gpg --export-secret-keys
> % gpg -o public-keys.gpg  --export

Note, however, that the first of these two is interactive in that it
asks for your passphrase(s). This is because it needs to be re-encrypted
because the storage format is different.

So you could do the first one manually every time you add (or remove)
private keys or change a passphrase. Anything else, including changing
key preferences, key expiry, etcetera, is equally reflected in
public-keys.gpg from the second line. 

The second can be done regularly and automatically.

Do back up other stuff from that directory as well. It's important,
non-public data: your ownertrust declarations, TOFU bindings and
history.

You might want to omit the file random_seed. I forgot how important this
is these days. I believe it has gotten less important at some time.

But using Sherpa is probably a good bet.

HTH,

Peter.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at 



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Re: "just invent something..."

[LisToFacTor via Gnupg-users]

On 5/23/20 4:30 PM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:


I mean, this seems like 95% of what you want.  You just want the
reference to an email address in step 4 removed?

If you can get the community to agree, I'm all in favor.


- All gpg operations (key generation, encryption, decryption) are
carried out on a device not connected to the Internet.


The FAQ covers both online and offline use.


I maintain two short internal documents on "WOT-less" and
"e-mail-less" off-line gpg use: one can be thought as "tutorial"
the other as "reference". When I get some free time I'll merge
them, remove group-specific stuff and post in a new thread.

Would that be okay?

Would that be worthwhile?


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Re: Backup of Keys

[Felix Finch]

On 20200524, Damien Goutte-Gattat via Gnupg-users wrote:

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 09:35:54PM -0700, Mark wrote:
I'm trying to figure out which files I need to backup to safeguard 
my keys.


Everything that needs to be saved is in GnuPG’s home directory, which 
on Windows should be `C:\Documents and Settings\\Application 
Data\gnupg`. In that folder you should save:


* the private keys (in the `private-keys-v1.d` subfolder;
* the public keys (the `pubring.kbx` file);
* the trust data (the `trustdb.gpg` file, plus the `tofu.db` file of 
you are using the TOFU trust model);

* any configuration file (`*.conf`);
* if you are using GpgSM, the `policies.txt` and `trustlist.txt` files.


Out of curiosity ... how safe are these files as is, assuming the private key file has a 
good strong passphrase?  If they are backed up on a USB stick which gets lost and found 
by someone else, or stolen, how much damage can be done?  How hard is it to crack a good 
passphrase?  I realize that's kind of a loose question, and "strong passphrase" 
doesn't help.

--
   ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & wood chipper / fe...@crowfix.com
 GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o

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Re: Backup of Keys

[Damien Goutte-Gattat via Gnupg-users]

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 09:35:54PM -0700, Mark wrote:

I'm sure this is a pretty stupid question


No, it’s not.


I'm trying to figure out which files I need to backup to safeguard my 
keys.


I’m assuming you are using GnuPG 2.2 on Windows here (based on your 
User-Agent).


Everything that needs to be saved is in GnuPG’s home directory, which on 
Windows should be `C:\Documents and Settings\\Application 
Data\gnupg`. In that folder you should save:


* the private keys (in the `private-keys-v1.d` subfolder;
* the public keys (the `pubring.kbx` file);
* the trust data (the `trustdb.gpg` file, plus the `tofu.db` file of you 
are using the TOFU trust model);

* any configuration file (`*.conf`);
* if you are using GpgSM, the `policies.txt` and `trustlist.txt` files.

For the private and public keys however, instead of saving the files 
directly I’d recommend exporting them from GnuPG:


% gpg -o private-keys.gpg --export-secret-keys
% gpg -o public-keys.gpg  --export

The rationale for doing so is that the exported files are in the 
standard OpenPGP format, from which you can re-import them without 
worrying about changes from one GnuPG version to another. To restore:


% gpg --import private-keys.gpg
% gpg --import public-keys.gpg

(You can also do that with a graphical interface, of course.)

Of note, there is also a much simpler option which could replace 
everything above: use the Sherpa tool [1], which does exactly what you 
need. It backs up a complete GnuPG profile into an archive and later 
allows you to restore it. Do mind the warning about Sherpa not being 
“ready for regular users”, though. For what it’s worth, I’ve used it a 
few times and never had any issues with it.


Hope that helps,

- Damien


[1] https://github.com/rjhansen/sherpa


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