Understanding that the NK3 lacks storage, is it possible to store public keys on the NK3 in some way that I can copy them onto a machine? From my understanding, the PGPCard spec does not let public keys to be stored on the card. This makes sense for smart cards, but it’s a pain to have to carry a Nitrokey and a USB key with the public key(s) on them if I want to install/transfer them in my travels.
Public keys can be totally public. So you could just email them to yourself and copy/import them as needed. People even publish their public keys on public key servers.
Yes, that is a workaround to my issue. However, I’d like to keep a copy of the public key on the NK3. If that’s physically impossible given the hardware or developers’ time, then I’ll have to use that workaround.
ok, as it is not possible at the moment to store the public key on the device you could just regenerate it via this instruction:
Exporting Public Key and Keyserver Usage
Although you can start to use your Nitrokey right away after generating the keys on your system, you need to import your public key on every system, you want to use the Nitrokey on. So to be prepared you have two options: You either save the public key anywhere you like and use it on another system or you save the public key on a webpage/keyserver.
So in a sense it is already there on the device. You just have to ‘unveil’ it.
Thank you for the guide. Per “it’s not possible at the moment to store the public key on the device,” is it something that can theoretically be added? I don’t know what storage capacities it has and whether it is even theoretically possible.
I am fairly new to the topic but what I have found so far is that you can restore the public keys from the private keys on the stick. If you want to use the cli there is blog post on that using a Yyubikey and GPG: Recovering lost GPG public keys from your YubiKey – Nicholas Sherlock. I can confirm that it also works for NK3. Alternatively Kleopatra has a button “CreatePGP Key” in the Smartcard Management Screen that presumably does the same thing.