clicompanion-devs team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/09/2011 05:04 AM, bdfhjk wrote:

> Unfortunatelly, Sean lost his private key and are unable to revoke
> public key. 


This is roughly the Internet equivalent of losing your drivers licence,
passport, birth certificate, social security card, house keys and car
keys, all at once.  Really bad idea.

> What he should do now?

(1) Let everyone who might use that key know it is now invalid
(somehow!).  This is what revocation certificates are for... so if you
lose that too, you need to "improvise"!

(2) Determine how he managed to "lose" both his key *and* his revocation
certificate, and then implement whatever procedures are needed to ensure
that this never ever happens again.

(3) On a secure machine, generate a new keypair, using a new strong
passphrase, generate a revocation certificate for his new private key.

(4) Store keys and certificate *very* safely (see (2) above!).

(5) Memorize the new passphrase, very carefully.

(6) Get his new key signed by a couple of people, upload it to the
keyservers as usual, and start using it.

Jonathan