Why should the private key not be stored verbatim or in plain text on the local computer?

Question

I read this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tswxhw92(VS.80).aspx

The first sentence says: "Asymmetric private keys should never be stored verbatim or in plain text on the local computer."

What is the problem? And as its key container permits.

The reason I'm asking is because I want to create an asymmetric key pair. The application that I am writing will encrypt the information that it sends to me with the public key. I was thinking about storing a public / private key pair in our source code management system so that it is backed up. Shouldn't I do this? If not, how do I store the private key so that it can be securely reserved?

Thanks. -Scott

Update: . Never used in cited sentence. Or does this mean that I should not store the keys from source control, if I am not ready to risk that the hacker can extract the keys from our source code management system or from a backup taken from it.

Answer 1

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Answer 2

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Answer 3

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