[Winpt-users] What is the format of the passphrase stored.

[Timo Schulz]

Vineet Madan wrote:

> Can u pl tell that in what format is the passphrase stored in the keyring

The passphrase is *not* stored in the keyring!

The passphrase will be hashed in combined with a salt to
produce a "derrived random key" which is used to encrypt
the secret key parts.


> 2. what is the format of passphrase while it is stored on the keyserver

It seems you have a wrong picture of (public key) cryptography. I would
suggest to read some basic documents about the concepts if you are
interested in technical details.

Of course the keyserver just stores the *public* parts of the key.
The secret key _should_ never leave your machine/smartcard/disk.


> 3. if passphrase ( bits making the passphrase ) is not part of the private
> key where is it stored and in what format.?

RFC2440 describes the procedure to convert a "string=passphrase" to a
key (S2K).


Sorry that I can give you a more detailed answer,

Timo