Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] client-side data encryption without routine access to private key

2009-02-18 13:46:05
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] client-side data encryption without routine access to private key
From: Landon Fuller <landonf AT bikemonkey DOT org>
To: Martin Simmons <martin AT lispworks DOT com>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:43:34 -0800

On Feb 18, 2009, at 3:26 AM, Martin Simmons wrote:

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:24:02 -0800, Landon Fuller said:

The private key is needed during backup if you use PKI Signatures.

Right. Currently, enabling PKI encryption also enables signing, but
the encryption implementation does not require this, and the private
key is not necessary for encrypting the backups.

However -- if you disable signing, there is no other validation
mechanism. One could add HMAC support without too much effort, but you
lose non-repudiation of the backups, as any recipient that can verify
the HMAC may also generate a valid one.

Does the private key have to be the one associated with the public key? It looks like the code loads them separately, so perhaps another solution is to use two key pairs and make a pem file containing the public key of one and the
private key of the other (assuming openssl allows that)?

Interesting -- I believe that would work. The only time the public/ private keypair are associated is when decrypting the session key on restore, so a truly "asymmetric" pair (heh) should simply cause restore to fail -- and signatures could still be verified.

-landonf

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