Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: AuDoMaN on September 15, 2012, 05:49 am

Title: GPG/PGP: "Usage: SC and E"?
Post by: AuDoMaN on September 15, 2012, 05:49 am
I have been messing around with PGP/GPG since I discovered SR. I have noticed that MOST keys, when being listed from the console, show 3 parts: pub, uid, and sub.

Code: [Select]
pub   2048R/XXXXXXXX 2012-09-15
uid                  XXXXXXXX
sub   2048R/XXXXXXXX 2012-09-15

when you list it while under --edit-key you see

Code: [Select]
pub  2048R/XXXXXXXX  created: 2012-09-15  expires: never       usage: SC 
                     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
sub  2048R/XXXXXXXX  created: 2012-09-15  expires: never       usage: E   
[ultimate] (1). XXXXXXXX

Thats most of them.

I have come across one that looks like this:

--list-keys
Code: [Select]
pub   2048R/XXXXXXXX 2012-09-15
uid                  XXXXXXXX


--edit-key && list
Code: [Select]
pub  2048R/XXXXXXXX  created: 2015-09-15  expires: never       usage: SCE
                     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
[ultimate] (1). XXXXXXXX

It has no sub part... and its usage is SCE instead of a pub part for SC and a sub part for E.

What does this mean? How can I create a pub key like this? Is a key like this more secure because it does show the sub ID? (Whatever you call the XXXX part after sub.) Which I believe to be related to the private key somehow.

I tried delkey and successfully deleted my sub key, but then I was unable to encrypt against it because I could not change my usage to SCE.

Main question: How can I create a pub key like this?

Thanks.
Title: Re: GPG/PGP: "Usage: SC and E"?
Post by: AuDoMaN on September 15, 2012, 07:06 am
Thanks Guru! That is everything I could have wanted from an answer and more.

Why do you have two ultimate? Do you have two uids associated with one key? How is this beneficial?

I know you can sign keys to create some sort of circle of trust that isn't really useful in a situation such as SR. Also to disable the trusted warning.

I have noticed you can also have multiple sub keys with one name or multiple names and one pub key, how is this useful?

Thanks.