[Mailman-Developers] GSOC Project idea: OpenPGP integration

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Stefan Schlott writes:

 > 2. Your list has elevated security requirements. In this case, you can
 > use gpg-agent to manage the secret key (and its passphrase).

I don't understand what threat you propose to address in this way.
It's true that you can prevent the attacker from getting access to the
key (using agent forwarding or a token, it need not be on the exposed
host at all), but we're assuming he has access to the host and the
Mailman process.

At a minimum you need some kind of privilege separation mechanism
within Mailman.  I'd recommend a postfix-style separate process which
does all cryptographic work.  But this might be a very large
performance hit.