pubring.gpg owned by root

[scar]

i went to sign an e-mail today, and got this error:

gpg: can't open `/home/scar/.gnupg/pubring.gpg' gpg: keydb_search
failed: file open error

upon inspection of the file, the owner and group had both been changed
to root.

any idea what could cause this? hopefully nothing malicious....

i found a discussion[1] about another user running into this problem
after upgrading thunderbird and, although that discussion is old and
referring to upgrading from 1.5 to 2.0, thunderbird here was recently
upgraded too (to 3.1.11 (ubuntu 10.04)).  i can't recall if enigmail was
also recently upgraded.....


1. http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-429325.html