Endpoint Encryption

this has happened before.  for no reason, every other year or so, my keyring corrupts.  pgp can't find my key.  it's in the backup, i reimport, but now it's not verified and the pgpdisks admin account won't link, even though it has the same key id and when i click it it knows which one.. but for some reason, wont' link.  all my disks are now inaccessible.  VERY BIG PROBLEM.. don't understand how this happens.  HELP PLEASE ASAP.  thank you.

 

my key is there, reimported, but somehow pgp won't see it.  HOW CAN I SOLVE THIS ISSUE????

 

i tried, for hours, to submit a tech support case but that webpage form just doesn't work.  always came back with a red alert, something not right, but wasn't in human readable form.. finally settled on needing a valid product version, which i entered from the beginning.  the reentered, in all different varieties possible.. wouldn't take it.  so here i am...........

 

 

THANKS!!!!

so, it seems that pgp spontaneously 'forgot' my new passphrase.  i changed the passphrase on my master key many months ago, been using it everyday since, in pgp and openpgp, but yesterday, the key was greyed out, pgp told me couldn't find private key for the file.. i reimported the key from the backup, perhaps that's where it lost the password change..?  

 

whatever the case, it's back, i have re-changed the passphrase, and things seem to work again. 

 

BUT, can someone tell me what in the world makes pgp suddenly forget the keys?  this isn't the first time this has happened.  i have reinstalled pgp, i have a new computer every couple years or so, so this has happened on more than one computer, boot drive, etc.   something isn't right.  any thoughts appreciated because considering my most precious files are encrypted with this program it is VERY concerning when things like this happen.  i need to be able to trust this system supremely.  need it to be rock solid.

 

any thoughts, thanks!

When you imported the key from your backup, the key will have the same passphrase it had at the moment the key was backed up. Good to hear you were able to provide the previous passphrase and have access to your disks again. As for the reason why this can happen? It can be anything, the key ring is saved by default in your My Documents folder under the PGP folder. The file pubring.pkr contains the public part of the keys on your key ring, while secring.skr contains the private parts of the keys that are yours. Both files can also have a backup file there. It could be that the secring.skr file either got somehow corrupted - so that your PGP / Encryption Desktop was not able to read it anymore, or somehow the file was removed / relocated. At this moment it would only be guessing what could have happened. If this happens again in the future, it would be interesting to see the contents of both the pubring.pkr and secring.skr files if they are there. To see what has happened. I assume you did not make a copy from these files at the moment you were facing this issue? More as side information, in case the customer portal is not working correctly to log a case. You can also call Symantec technical support to log a case for you. We should have local numbers in most countries which can be found via the following page: http://www.symantec.com/support/techsupp_contact_phone.jsp

hi, thanks for the reply.

yes, aware where the keyrings are, and i also backup to another local volume (thankfully).  i will keep an eye out for this when it happens again i'll call tech support.  it is a periodic corruption, no idea what would cause it as nothing in my config has changed, no new disks or file structure or anything.  no new software.  and i don't monkey with the keyrings.  i do notice that when this happens (this may be the third or fourth time in the maybe what, ten years i've been using pgp) the desktop app will show no keys, the keyrings will have a size of zero kb.  then i open a backup ring, import, and the keys are back but now greyed out (not verified), so i reverify, often at this point clicking a pgpdisk or attempting to decrypt a file will result in the alert 'private key not found'.. leaving me dead in the water.  so i try restart, try reinstall pgp, reimport, etc.  and at some point, i get the key to be recoginzed and things start to work again.  but it doesn't seem step by step the same pattern each time, at least i can't remember if it is anyway.. and i see no cause for the corruption.  the thing that really worries me is that period after reimport when the key is in the ring, and it has the same id (cause it's the same key) but pgp is still saying 'no secret key found', and the admin name in the admin field for pgpdisks is 'unknown'.. (albeit often with the proper key id).  and then, somehow, i get it linked again, and things are ok.  but this time it took two days and a good amount of worry.  it's not an issue that's easily track down able... but it is real.  spontaneous keyring zeroing.  then pgps internal database doesn't want to relink the reimport of same key with previous volumes, etc.  

i will try to document more realtime next time it happens.  hopefully won't have to, :).

 

this is latest mac version (10.3.0 MP3 i think), and OS 10.8.5, fyi.  thanks.