oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: upstream source code authenticity checking
From: Alistair Crooks <agc () pkgsrc org>
Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 17:24:42 +0200
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 02:24:24PM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
On 04/26/2013 01:57 AM, Alistair Crooks wrote:All people can see from a key listing is who trusted them and when, not how much, or whether the trust was warranted.Just for the record, most OpenPGP key certification listings don't indicate anything at all about trust, including "who trusted them". they show cryptographically-verifiable assertions of identity and control over key material. Put another way, a signature on an OpenPGP key+userid says "I believe that this key belongs to this person" -- it doesn't say anything about trust in that person (or about their intrinsic trustworthiness). Sorry for the nit-pick, but the term "trust" is so overused and confused in these contexts that i think it's important to clarify it when it's getting muddled.
Oh, I'm not muddled, I was using the word "trust" as it appears (34 times) in RFC 4880 - mostly relating to 5.2.3.13 "Trust Signature" and 5.10 "Trust Packet". And if you seriously think someone who searches for my public key on a webserver, or through mail, or business card, etc, downloads my public key from one of the servers, imports it into their own pubring, signs it with their own private key, then mails it to me, or uploads it to one of the key servers, all without trusting me in any way, then I'll show you a pretty awful stalker (and fairly inefficient one, due to the need to sign my pubkey), a fan boy (which is hardly likely to happen in my case), or someone who is rather sad. (I'm discounting impaired judgement due to the baroque processes involved here, sorry xkcd). i.e. no-one goes to that kind of trouble just to say "I know this person" - that's what facebook and google+ are for. Regards, Alistair
Current thread:
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking, (continued)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Alistair Crooks (Apr 25)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Kurt Seifried (Apr 25)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Dag-Erling Smørgrav (Apr 26)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Kurt Seifried (Apr 26)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Dag-Erling Smørgrav (Apr 26)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Alistair Crooks (Apr 26)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Kurt Seifried (Apr 26)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Eric H. Christensen (Apr 29)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Daniel Kahn Gillmor (Apr 30)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Robbie MacKay (May 01)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Alistair Crooks (May 02)
- OpenPGP certifications are identity assertions [was: Re: upstream source code authenticity checking] Daniel Kahn Gillmor (May 02)
- Re: OpenPGP certifications are identity assertions [was: Re: upstream source code authenticity checking] Simon McVittie (May 02)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Kurt Seifried (May 02)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Russ Allbery (May 02)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Alan Coopersmith (May 02)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Russ Allbery (May 02)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Josh Bressers (Apr 25)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Alistair Crooks (Apr 25)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking Marcus Meissner (Apr 26)
- Re: upstream source code authenticity checking nicolas vigier (Apr 25)