[Discuss] KeePassX

[Richard Pieri]

Daniel Barrett wrote:
> Just wondering how safe a file is when encrypted with a 4096-bit GPG key.

GPG doesn't work that way.

Your 4096-bit asymmetric key is either RSA or DH, both of which are VERY 
slow algorithms, too slow for general use.

When you encrypt a message, the encryption engine generates a random 
session key. This session key is used to encrypt the message using a 
symmetric cipher (GnuPG uses CAST-128 by default). The session key is 
then encrypted with the public half of your recipient's asymmetric key 
pair and attached to the message.

When the recipient decrypts the message, the session key is decrypted 
with the private half of the asymmetric key pair. The recovered session 
key is used to decrypt the message.

SSL and SSH both work roughly the same way.

-- 
Rich P.