Secure and privacy sensitive key hirarchy, how to manage diffrent identities.

Alex's Avatar

Alex

28 Aug, 2012 10:14 AM

Hi,

I was crawling the web for about two hours now and can't believe that I didn't find a answer to this questions yet, because this issue should be crucial I think.

So, I used GPG for seven years now, but recently I stumbled upon an article (didn't find it again) about a pretty straight forward key hirarchy the author applied. Red that I wanted to set up my own real secure and privacy aware gpg key structure. What I want to achieve is:

  1. To have a very secure offline master key (thats simple and documented alot in the web).
  2. To have subkeys, that are signed by the master (still simple)
  3. To have a subkey for each purpose that just reveals the private information I want to reveal for this purpose.
  4. These subkeys shouldn't be identified to be in connection, with the master key. So that I will be able to decide, to reveal the information that subkey A/Identity A and subkey B/identity B are both me. Both identities should be strictly seperated to each other.

So, I would like to be able to sign with my real name or sign with a pseudonym when wished. It should not be possible to others to make a connection between theses identities.

Thank you a lot for hints, help and opinions!,

Alex.

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Luke Le on 28 Aug, 2012 03:17 PM

    Luke Le's Avatar

    Hi Alex,

    I think this might be the blog post you're looking for.
    It seems to describe a similar scenario you're trying to setup.

    http://blog.dest-unreach.be/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/pgp-subkeys....

    Hope that helps.

  2. 2 Posted by Alex on 28 Aug, 2012 08:32 PM

    Alex's Avatar

    Thank you for your answer,

    its a bit late and I just red through one time, will read again tomorrow. The author didn't really mention several identities though, would this be a side effect of his approach he just didn't care about?

    Thanks,

    Alex.

  3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Steve on 23 Sep, 2012 02:45 PM

    Steve's Avatar

    You can only separate identities when using different master keys. Otherwise it will most likely possible to make connections between UserIDs.

    You might want to:
    Create several keys (optional with several UIDs)
    then sign all those keys with the one offline master-key

    That way all those keys are signed by one key but you can't proof that they are owned by a single person.

  4. Support Staff 4 Posted by Luke Le on 09 Oct, 2012 09:30 PM

    Luke Le's Avatar

    Closing due to inactivity.
    Please feel free to re-open.

  5. Luke Le closed this discussion on 09 Oct, 2012 09:30 PM.

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