Re: Restricted storage

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Thu, 1 Jun 2006 10:02:48 +0200,
Bas Wijnen <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
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> On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 02:58:17AM +0200, Pierre THIERRY wrote:
> > Scribit Bas Wijnen dies 01/06/2006 hora 00:49:
> > > (Intentional side-effect is that storage which is given to some other
> > > user cannot be checked for opaqueness.  This can be "fixed", but I'd
> > > rather not do that if possible.)
> > 
> > Then just don't bother to implement opaque storage and let users take
> > care of it on a social basis. Unverifiable opaque storage is of no use,
> > or I didn't understand it's purpose.
> 
> In case of encryption keys, the idea is that even the user doesn't need access
> to the private part (except through a well-defined interface which doesn't
> expose the private keys themselves, that is signing and decrypting), and that
> must not be exposed to the world, not even by accident.

For that reason I have some of my encryption keys on a smart card, on
which they were generated (the OpenPGP smart card).  Smart cards give
me the advantages of opaque storage that I care about, while reducing
the risks that I see in it to a bare minimum.

In fact, if I were not so lazy, I probably would have generated the
key on an off-line computer, and then uploaded it to the card while
storing a print-out of the secret key in a secure place.  That would
be even better, but my needs are rather modest so I didn't.

Thanks,
Marcus