GPG with PKCS#15 card

Bow via Gnupg-users <[email protected]> Wed, 18 Mar 2026 21:41:47 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.encryption.gpg.user
Message-ID	<abtv_ucKWjpa5Im-@nnw1>

I would like to clarify to what extent GPG 2.4.9 (not GPGSM) supports
PKCS#15 cards.
(In case it matters: I am working with a J3R180, not a Yubikey.)

The SCDaemon section of the manual [1] says that PKCS#15 is used by
GPGSM, from which I infer GPG can not use it - which makes sense to me
as it is my understanding that PKCS#15 v1.1 stores X.509/etc
certificates - but GPG can use PIV cards [2] which I believe to also
store certificates. (And I understand this [3] user-list answer to
mean GPG supports PKCS#15 cards.) So I am confused.

Can I use a PKCS#15 v1.1 with GPG similarly to an OpenPGP card? (Not
including card management, just signing and encryption.)
If so, how can I generate key-stubs/associate on-card keys with OpenPGP
subkeys? Would checkkeys work?


Thank you for your time,
Bow


[1] https://www.gnupg.org/%28en%29/documentation/manuals/gnupg24/scdaemon.1.html
[2] https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/gpg_002dcard.html
[3] https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2026-January/068092.html

_______________________________________________
Gnupg-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 228 B)