[3449] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: IP: State Govt Will Use Datakey Smart Cards
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rick Smith)
Mon Oct 12 12:13:15 1998
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 10:49:25 -0500
To: Paolo Da Ros <paolo.daros@cryptonet.it>
From: Rick Smith <rick_smith@securecomputing.com>
Cc: Ed Gerck <egerck@laser.cps.softex.br>,
Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
dcsb@ai.mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <361E2E0A.90C78416@cryptonet.it>
At 04:38 PM 10/9/98 +0100, Paolo Da Ros wrote:
>You will never need to recover a signature private key (you will just ask
for a
>new one), and you will have the chance to recover the encryption private key
>(in our experience in Italy a very strong corporate requirement, ...
This is a very good thing. In theory, the protocols should work fine if you
simply generate a new key when the old key is lost through a smartcard
failure.
However, the existing software oriented protocols were originally
implemented with the implicit assumption that secret keys were somehow or
other recoverable by the owner if a crash occurred. This is not true for
the smart cards. It may take some time to work out any bugs caused by this
assumption.
Rick.
smith@securecomuting.com
