pgp-alt-wot

PGP keys signed by me so I don’t have to validate the same keys again-and-again and can just trust my own paper verified fingerprint in the subsequent validations.

WoT? Web Of Trust

• Why?
• Inclusion policy
• Places to check for keys
• Mirrors
• See also

Why?

For example, I use Tor Browser everywhere and download it directly from their website. They have signed it using GPG (a OpenPGP implementation) and to ensure it hasn’t been tampered with, I have to check that signature and I have two options:

• I can always verify the signature, but that takes time and I would need to verify it from both support.torproject.org and 4bflp2c4tnynnbes.onion. But what if they were compromised or I was under a MITM attack or lazy and verfied only one version?
• (or) I could verify the signing key carefully once, sign (or certify) it by myself and in the future simply verify that my own key is valid (as I have been doing this a few times on the other side of dualbooting and at family).

This second method is also encouraged by Tails.

What if I am wrong and trust the wrong key? I think I am less likely to trust a wrong key by verifying it carefully and signing it once than verifying it separately every time. However if I do sign a wrong key, I can always revoke my signature and then publish the key with my revocation signature on public keyservers (which I don’t usually do, while I cannot control what people do with the signatures from this repository).

Inclusion policy

• I am reasonably certain that the key belongs to whom it claims to belong to or I trust the key to belong to whomever it belongs to.
• I have some need of the key or have attended keysigning party with the key owner.
• me/me.asc is just my key and place where I try to keep all signatures it has received. Symlinks are legacy reasons and other me’s are also me.

Places to check for keys

• GitHub, Gitea and GitLab expose user public keys when you append a .gpg after their profile page (.keys for SSH).
• The Internet Archive’s Waybackmachine is always a good place too especially when using together with official websites.
• Some people have similar projects or webpages for this purpose
  • Artemis’ verify page

Mirrors

• main: git.blesmrt.net/Mikaela/pgp-alt-wot
• git.piraattipuolue.fi/Mikaela/pgp-alt-wot
• git.com.de/Mikaela/pgp-alt-wot (onion)

See also

• Qubes OS: On Digital Signatures and Key Verification
• Finnish Digital and Population Services Agency certificate search
  • S/MIME, not OpenPGP though