McAfee MEJCAE-AM-DA Product Guide - Page 39

Disabling and enabling a key, Splitting and rejoining a key, Creating a split key

Page 39 highlights

Managing Keys Splitting and rejoining a key 2 Enter the following on the command line: ebs --key-edit --revoke 3 Enter your current passphrase to gain access to the key. E-Business Server revokes the key. The best way to circulate a revoked key is to place it on a public key server. Disabling and enabling a key Sometimes you may want to temporarily disable a key. The ability to disable keys is useful when you want to retain a public key for future use, but you don't want it in your way when you perform encryption operations. Use the --key-details option to see if your key is disabled (see Getting more information about keys on page 29 for more information). To disable a key: 1 Enter the following on the command line: ebs --key-edit --disable E-Business Server temporarily disables your key. To enable a key: 1 Enter the following on the command line: ebs --key-edit --enable E-Business Server re-enables your key. Splitting and rejoining a key Any private key can be split into shares among multiple "shareholders" using a cryptographic process known as Blakely-Shamir key splitting. This technique is recommended for extremely high security keys. Creating a split key To create a split key, you are asked to specify the minimum number of people required to rejoin the key and the number of shares to make. The resulting shares are saved as files either encrypted to the public key of a shareholder or encrypted conventionally if the shareholder has no public key. After the key has been split, the share files must be sent to the shareholders via ftp or email. Attempts to sign or decrypt with a split key will automatically cause E-Business Server to temporarily rejoin the key. To create a split key: 1 Enter the following on the command line: ebs --key-split 2 Enter the user ID of the first shareholder. 3 Enter the number of shares for this user, or accept the default (one share). 4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have specified all the shareholders, then hit Return. 5 Enter the minimum number of shares needed to rejoin the key, known as the threshold, or accept the default value. 6 Enter the passphrase of the key you are splitting. 37 E-Business Server™ 8.6 Product Guide

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37
E-Business Server
8.6
Product Guide
Managing Keys
Splitting and rejoining a key
2
Enter the following on the command line:
ebs --key-edit <userID of key being revoked> --revoke
3
Enter your current passphrase to gain access to the key.
E-Business Server revokes the key. The best way to circulate a revoked key is to place it on a public
key server.
Disabling and enabling a key
Sometimes you may want to temporarily disable a key. The ability to disable keys is useful when you want
to retain a public key for future use, but you don’t want it in your way when you perform encryption
operations. Use the
--key-details
option to see if your key is disabled (see
Getting more information about
keys
on page 29
for more information).
To disable a key:
1
Enter the following on the command line:
ebs --key-edit <userID of key to disable> --disable
E-Business Server temporarily disables your key.
To enable a key:
1
Enter the following on the command line:
ebs --key-edit <userID of key to re-enable> --enable
E-Business Server re-enables your key.
Splitting and rejoining a key
Any private key can be split into shares among multiple “shareholders” using a cryptographic process known
as Blakely-Shamir key splitting. This technique is recommended for extremely high security keys.
Creating a split key
To create a split key, you are asked to specify the minimum number of people required to rejoin the key and
the number of shares to make.
The resulting shares are saved as files either encrypted to the public key of a shareholder or encrypted
conventionally if the shareholder has no public key. After the key has been split, the share files must be sent
to the shareholders via ftp or email.
Attempts to sign or decrypt with a split key will automatically cause E-Business Server to temporarily rejoin
the key.
To create a split key:
1
Enter the following on the command line:
ebs --key-split <userID of key to split>
2
Enter the user ID of the first shareholder.
3
Enter the number of shares for this user, or accept the default (one share).
4
Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have specified all the shareholders, then hit
Return
.
5
Enter the minimum number of shares needed to rejoin the key, known as the
threshold
, or accept the
default value.
6
Enter the passphrase of the key you are splitting.