I have a hard time understanding the benefits of the keyring (e.g. GNOME keyring). I get the convenience parts - I don’t have to enter password for something every time I want to use it (e.g. mounted encrypted drive) and I don’t have to create a secret for some background stuff (applications keys). But the problem is, if I understand it correctly, that every application has the same access to my keyring, so, in theory, a malicious application can just read my Signal key and they can just read all my Signal messages right? Is there a point, then, in encrypting e.g. local database (like Signal) if the key to that database is readily available anyway? Any input is welcome. thanks!


Ha! I sound keen like an AI cause I was thinking about exactly this problem when I saw your post and have been continuing to research.
The GNOME keyring does not defend against rogue processes for now. However KDE wallet can prompt a user before access (I’ve not tried it):
https://docs.kde.org/stable_kf6/en/kwalletmanager/kwalletmanager/wallet-access-control.html
…this seems a fair bit safer, presuming it works.
Thanks! Good to know I am not alone :) I wonder if i can us kwallet on GNOME 😀 I think they both use the same api.