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If I protect my private key with a passphrase, then it will be encrypted

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Where is the symmetric key stored for it ? Is it somehow in the certificate itself? What if I have specified that it's not exportable and passphrase protected, if someone gains access to my OS and uses mimikatz to export it will she/he be able to decrypt it (assuming the passphrase was as easy as Test123) or will it fail because the symmetric key is tied to the OS and not the certificate itself?

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  • There are several symmetric keys involved in SSH, with different purposes. Are you referring to the symmetric key used to encrypt the private key? – a CVn Mar 15 '17 at 8:45
  • @MichaelKjörling Yes, I meant the symmetric key used to encrypt the private key. I'm not referring to SSH strictly. – adam86 Mar 15 '17 at 8:47
  • Please do not post text as images. It is hard to read and does not work with screen readers. Instead, edit the post to contain the actual text. – Anders Mar 15 '17 at 12:56
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Your question is answered here.

Specifically, the key is encrypted using AES-128 in CBC mode with the DS4228D85838E32589695E83A22595C7 (hex) initialization vector. The passphrase you provided is used for generating the AES key.

How is the key derived from the password? According to this, it is done this way:

1) Append the first 8 bytes of the IV to the passphrase, without a separator (serves as a salt).

2) Take the MD5 hash of the resulting string (once).

Not exactly state-of-the-art.

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  • so is the passphrase the keying-material for the symmetric key so to say ? – adam86 Mar 15 '17 at 8:55
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    Yup. Can't be any other way, really. The pitfall is that the key derivation algorithm used is scary bad (8 bytes of salt + MD5) – Stephane Mar 15 '17 at 8:57
  • What does "Append the first 8 bytes of the IV " specifically mean? EDIT: Ok I got it. "The 128-bit hex string in the DEK-Info header is the initialization vector (IV) for the cipher. " – adam86 Mar 15 '17 at 9:01

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