Please excuse the interruption. I'm experiencing some challenges in attempting to export a private key from Symantec Encryption Desktop. Apologies in advance for any errors in my misunderstanding of how keys work - while I'm familiar with the basic concepts, I don't pretend to fully understand all of the workings of public and private keys.
In any event, what I've done is to import a certificate (ending with .pfx) I obtained from startssl.com for use with e-mail. The original intent was to use it within Outlook and for that it works just fine. I then discovered that I could import the certificate into SED and use it there instead of a separate PGP key pair generated, which held a bit of appeal to me since it would eliminate the need for the separate PGP key pair. So I went ahead and imported it and did a few test e-mails. Everything went fine, so I retired my other PGP key pair (but kept it of course to read old e-mails).
Anyway, I'll readily admit that I'm not quite sure exactly what SED does when it imports the cert. It looks and behaves just like any other PGP key, and I can see it show up both under "All Keys" and "My Private Keys". I can also export the public key. However, I cannot seem to export the private key. When I try to do so, the option to "Include Private Key(s)" is grayed out.
In case you're wondering why I'm trying to do this, I am also attempting to set up an encrypted mail client on my mobile phone. I imported the original certificate into that client, but for some reason, can't decrypt e-mail that has been sent to me using the public key generated within SED from the imported certificate. I suspect that SED has done something in order to "convert" the certificate into an equivalent PGP key pair, if that makes any sense, so am attempting to export that key pair to import into the encryption software on my phone, assuming that makes any sense.
In any event, I'd just like to figure out how to export the private key. If you have any thoughts or suggestions do let me know.
Thanks,
David