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How, if at all, do SSH keys differ from asymmetric keys used for other purposes, e.g. email signing?
I'm prompted to ask this, in part, because on OS X, there are apps available to manage SSH keys (ssh-agent, SSHKeychain, etc) as well as apps designed to manage GPG keys (GPG Keychain Access, etc), and apparently ne'er the twain meet. However, I do not believe this is an OS X-specific issue.
Is this separation of concerns because the keys are of quite different kinds, or because they are stored in different places, or is it for some other reason or combination of reasons, e.g. historical reasons?
It's important to note that the underlying encryption standard is also different. gpg mostly uses DSA, while SSH mostly uses RSA. There's a limited number of standard asymmetric standards, and most applications support multiple standards, but the standards that are 'normal' for different applications vary. – jcrawfordor – 2011-04-22T07:40:02.160