2013-08-20 Public Key Fiasco

I got my first encrypted email in years. I use GnuPG.

1. I didn’t have the necessary secret key available. I found it in an old backup I still had available.

2. I didn’t know the passphrase required to use the secret key I just found. I tried guessing for a while, to no avail.

3. I wanted to revoke the secret key or change it’s expiry. That requires the unknown passphrase.

This is stupid. #fail

Sad story from the distant past: In 2005 my old keys appeared not to work when I tried sending email to a friend. When we don’t use these tools every now and then, we won’t be able to use them when it’s required of us.

In 2005

As I considered my setup*, I decided I might want to upgrade my GnuPG 1.4.9 installation. Building it myself… it requires libassuan, libksba, the GNU Portable Threads Library, iconv, and libgpg-error. Starting all the jobs and realizing that iconv doesn’t install. Fuuuuuu!

I think I will do a Backup of the system and install Homebrew. And then, at last, after many hours, no doubt, I’ll `brew gpg`.

Backup

Homebrew

As the backup is being made, I discover an old revocation certificate for the damn key without a passphrase. And it works!

On the key servers:

gpg: suche nach "kensanata" auf hkp-Server keys.gnupg.net
(1)	Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org>
	Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>
	Alex Schroeder <kensanata@gmail.org>
	Alex Schroeder <alex.schroeder@openlaw.ch>
	  1024 bit DSA key 89D0FBCC, erzeugt: 2006-06-26 (widerrufen)
(2)	Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org>
	Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>
	Alex Schroeder <kensanata@gmail.com>
	  1024 bit DSA key 353AEFEF, erzeugt: 2002-07-10
(3)	Alex Schroeder (Kensanata) <alex@gnu.org>
	  1024 bit DSA key 23AAC850, erzeugt: 2001-04-12

Key status:

pub   1024D/353AEFEF 2002-07-10 [verfällt: 2015-08-20]
uid                  Alex Schroeder <kensanata@gmail.com>
uid                  Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>
uid                  Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org>
uid                  [jpeg image of size 5665]
sub   4096R/363A61EE 2013-08-20 [verfällt: 2015-08-20]

pub   1024D/89D0FBCC 2006-06-26 [widerrufen: 2006-06-26]
uid                  Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>
uid                  Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org>
uid                  Alex Schroeder <kensanata@gmail.org>
uid                  Alex Schroeder <alex.schroeder@openlaw.ch>

pub   1024D/23AAC850 2001-04-12 [verfallen: 2002-04-12]
uid                  Alex Schroeder (Kensanata) <alex@gnu.org>

353AEFEF and 363A61EE are the ones to use. 😄 👌

#Cryptography