Re: Another passphrase related question...

11 msg	Can't propagate key through public keyservers
6 msg	Bug in getkey.c:2219:merge_selfsigs

Another passphrase related question...
\ Chris Walters (27 Oct 2006)
. \ David Shaw (27 Oct 2006)
. \ Werner Koch (27 Oct 2006)

1 msg	[Announce] GnuPG logo contest - 5 days to go
1 msg	[Announce] GnuPG 1.9.94 released
4 msg	Windows GUI recommendation for USB disk
2 msg	can't disable core dumps
3 msg	Signing/encrypting options using GPGShell
2 msg	Holger Smolinski/Germany/IBM is on a cource unt...
11 msg	GPGDisk campaign
5 msg	decrypt problem
2 msg	A question regarding gnupg and passphrases...
2 msg	[Announce] GnuPG 1.9.93 released
1 msg	Re: GPG and PGP Compatibility (vedaal)
1 msg	Re: GPG and PGP Compatibility (Conan Purves)
5 msg	Problem generating keys on FSFE card
8 msg	GPG and PGP Compatibility
26 msg	OpenPGP Card implementation
2 msg	pgp.sig as an attachment
4 msg	A problem with winpt encrypting the current window

Subject:	Re: Another passphrase related question...
Group:	Gnupg-users
From:	Werner Koch
Date:	27 Oct 2006

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:19, Chris Walters said:

> The first question regards the maximum length of a passphrase - I would
> like to know what it is in GnuPG. I know there is a practical limit to

There is no explicit one. However the passphrase is put in secure
memory and thus in practise there is a limit. A few hundered bytes
won't be a problem.

> The second one is, how does GnuPG handle "non-printable" characters,
> other than new line characters? What I mean by this is basically

Not at all. You better don't use any control characters but other
then that, gpg does not do anything with the entered passphrase. It
would have been better if we had specified that the passphrase shall
be UTF-8 encoded. we can't change that anymore and so you should
assume the passphrase is basically binary. Take care, when using
Pinentry or another GUI there might be some translation done by the
GUI. When usning the tty some characters are translated or ignored.
For example a tab is translated to a space and we ignore all control
characters.

Shalom-Salam,

Werner

_______________________________________________
Gnupg-users mailing list
Gnupg-users
http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users