[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#840669: Bug#840669: Bug#840669: Beware of leftover gpg-agent processes

[Ian Jackson]

Daniel Kahn Gillmor writes ("Re: [pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#840669: Bug#840669: Beware of leftover gpg-agent processes"):
> On Sat 2016-10-15 11:21:29 -0400, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > 1. gnupg1-compatible authorisation lifetime:
> 
> I believe this is a deliberate change in semantics from the upstream
> GnuPG project.  In particular, authorization for the use of secret key
> material is now the responsibility of the gpg-agent.  This is an overall
> win, because it means that no process ever gets access to the secret key
> in memory *except* for the gpg-agent.

I think these properties about key material handling are good, but
this is not the same question as the authorisation lifetime.  You are
conflating two separate things.

>  The gpg-agent is where these decisions are made.

Actually, though, it just acts as an oracle, so it does not make any
decisions.

> If you want an agent that never caches any passphrase (and therefore has
> a one-use-per-authorization), this is an easy thing to do by adjusting
> max-cache-ttl in gpg-agent.conf.  you can also set this dynamically with
> gpgconf (see the --runtime option in gpgconf(1)).

It sounds like this is very close to what I want for the authorisation
lifetime qeustion (provided that it isn't racy).  Why is this not the
default for command line users without a session-provided agent ?

> Thanks for your engagement on this issue, Ian.

Thank you for being so tolerant of me being argumentative !

Regards,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson at chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

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