mail_crypt plugin, few questions

[Aki Tuomi]

On 06.11.2017 13:59, Zbyszek Żółkiewski wrote:
>> On 06.11.2017 13:20, Zbyszek Żółkiewski wrote:
>>>> Wiadomość napisana przez Aki Tuomi <aki.tuomi at dovecot.fi> w dniu 06.11.2017, o godz. 08:44:
>>>>
>>>> On 04.11.2017 20:52, Zbyszek Żółkiewski wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have few questions regarding mail_crypt:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) Is mail_crypt_global_private_key file read upon dovecot start/restart only or it is/can be read in any other time? I have made few tests by starting dovecot and removing master key for decryption - therefore it is not available on the platform - it only reside in memory, removing one of attack vectors
>>>> It can be given from config file, or from user database. It is read on
>>>> use. You can also encrypt the key using a password, but in the end, the
>>>> password or the key needs to be provided by something.
>>> yes i am loading it in conf file like: 
>>>
>>> mail_crypt_global_private_key = </etc/dovecot/somefile.key 
>>>
>>> but then i am removing that file - and it looks like dovecot still is able to decrypt mails encrypted with that file. So you are saying there might be situation that this file need to be “re-read” from disk ? 
>> Yeah, the file content is loaded into configuration. If you need to
>> re-read it you need to restart dovecot.
> ok thanks, so this is what i wanted to know: so the content of the private key are read on startup and held in memory, and they are only refreshed when dovecot restarts. So in my use-case i can safely remove private key once dovecot started, right ?
>
> thanks,
> _
> Zbyszek

Yeah, you can safely remove it.

Aki