Grant wrote:
My understanding of GPG is weak. Can someone point out my misconception(s)?
Speaking from a purely practical standpoint, keeping your private and public keys completely separate is extremely inconvenient with (IMO) a negligible security benefit.
However, there is arguably a much bigger security issue with keeping your private key on a remote server, particularly one you have no control over. Pulling your keypair locally and doing any decryption operations locally is a much easier, and more practical, improvement.
If you keep the two halves of your keypair physically separate, then an attacker would need to get two distinct pieces of information in order to break any encryption using your keys. For extremely high security purposes, this may be a worthy benefit. For something like email, your public key should be considered common knowledge anyway. If an attacker can gain control of your private key, the extra burden of getting your public key is insignificant.
Put another way: a file containing both your public and private key contains essentially the same amount of secure information as a file containing only your private key. So long as your private key is kept secure, with or without your public key, your risks should be minimal.
--K
