Author: Chris Oattes Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] GPG passphrase brute forcing
Dean Earley said the following on 03/02/08 11:26: > Hi all.
>
> After Hugo's talk yesterday, I decided to see if I could find my old PGP
> details.
> Unfortunately, it appears I set a passphrase when I created it 7 years ago.
> Numerous sites say it needs to be bruteforced, but don;t say how.
> Has anyone come across a script to brute force a passphrase?
>
> Unfortunately, I can't even revoke it without the phrase :|
>
> Thanks.
>
The thing is, passphrases are meant to make it so that anyone who
obtains your private key can't use it without knowing the passphrase. If
they were "easy" to break, there wouldn't be any point in using them, as
anyone that got the key could break it just as easily using the same
brute force method. This would make PGP signifcantly less secure.
