PGP "master keys"

[David Shaw]

On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 09:53:27PM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> In an article on disk encryption
> (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/26/pgp_infosec/), the following
> paragraph appears:
> 
> 	BitLocker has landed Redmond in some hot water over its insistence
> 	that there are no back doors for law enforcement. As its
> 	encryption code is open source, PGP says it can guarantee no back
> 	doors, but that cyber sleuths can use its master keys if
> 	neccessary.
> 
> What is a "master key" in this context?

It sounds rather like a misunderstanding/mangling of PGP's Additional
Decryption Key feature.

David

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