On Apr 24, 2014 10:35 PM, "privacyfirst" <privacyfi...@xmail.net> wrote: > > > (The first attempt to send this message failed - so I'm resending it.) > > Hello, > > one of the features of OpenPGP v2 Smartcards is "Key generation on card". > > From this I would expect a high degree of security as the key is only stored on the smartcard and *never* touches the disk and therefore should not be able to be stolen without stealing the physical smartcard. > > I wanted to test this property. > My goal was to generate a key that can not be exported (gpg --export-secret-key should not be possible). > > This is how I generated my keys: > > gpg2 --card-edit > > admin > > generate > Make off-card backup of encryption key? (Y/n) --> n > > > After keys were successfully generated I tried to run > > gpg2 --export-secret-keys --armor > > to verify that it is not possible to export private keys generated on the smartcard, but to my surprise it was possible and I got the private PGP key block. > Is this expected? (this even works after removing the cardreader, so I > assume the key is on the disk) > I did not choose the wrong keyid as there is only one. > > How can I generate a non-exportable key safely on the card?
You have done everything correctly: the "private" key block you're seeing is a "stub" that tells GnuPG that the actual private key resides on a smartcard with a specific serial number (to distinguish it from other smartcards you might use for other keys). It does not contain any private data. If you were to go to a different system, import your public key (say, from a keyserver), insert your smartcard, and run "gpg --card-status" then GnuPG will automatically generate a new private key stub on that system so you could use the card. Cheers! -Pete
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