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So.. Anyone wants to do a PGP key signing party in San Francisco? I asked on HN before but no one seems to be interested back then. I hope some meetup organizer

So.. Anyone wants to do a PGP key signing party in San Francisco? I asked on HN before but no one seems to be interested back then. I hope some meetup organizer can pick this up.

numlocked 13y ago
No better way than to do it yourself! Create the meet up and submit it here. I'd be up for it.
frewsxcv 13y ago
Yes, I would definitely be interested
steveklabnik 13y ago
I am very interested.
willvarfar 13y ago
I'm curious, how would you verify an attendee's identity?
- hipaulshi 13y ago
  government id/picture id checking against pgp keyserver, to make sure you are who say you are. So you have to be physically present at the party with your key and id. that's how the trust network is built.
  - ywyrd 13y ago
    Yes, because pieces of paper given out by men with guns are the font of all truth. ADD: Fuck this statist cesspool.
    - mirkules 13y ago
      Would you be more comfortable giving your fingerprint or DNA sample to prove your identity? Side note: maybe there could be a way to irreversibly hash one's fingerprint or DNA sample into an electronic signature
      - daveid 13y ago
        Any hashing function would do it, but you leave your fingerprints and DNA anywhere. Would be easy to get access to it and copy.
        bobbydavid 13y ago
        that's fine, its a public key :)
        daveid 13y ago
        I believe proving identity can only be done using a private key.
      - growse 13y ago
        The problem with that, of course, is that someone's DNA or fingerprint isn't a secret. There's no reason why I couldn't take your fingerprint, embed it into a signature and claim to be you. And this is part of why authentication and identity are very difficult things to do right, mostly because very few people have thought about what it is they're verifying. If I publish a public key and say it belongs to me, 'Bob Smith', the only practical use that has is that you can verify that a future message signed by 'Bob Smith' was signed by someone with access to the same private key as the guy who originally published the public key. Any assumption about who 'Bob Smith' actually is, and who that corresponds to in the real world (what other identities do they assert), and also that 'Bob Smith' is a single entity, are simply assumptions. It's impossible to pin a human down to a single, guaranteed verifiable, non impersonatable and non revocable identity. 'Documents issued by men with guns' isn't foolproof, but we use it as a trust anchor mostly because everyone else does, and we don't have much alternative.
    - krapp 13y ago
      Odd. I don't recall anyone at the DMV forcing my license on me at gunpoint.
    - r0s 13y ago
      I think you mean indifferent bureaucrats without guns.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  See "The Keysigning Party HOWTO": http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysi...
GhotiFish 13y ago
"Hello! I'm Fish!" "Hi. I'm Jesus!" "Wow, Jesus? Nice to meet you, can I have your public key?" I don't trust any of you :)
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  This highlights a huge problem of the PGP/GPG web of trust: It mostly solves the wrong problem. I don't care whether a Linux kernel release is signed by a guy who has government-issued ID that says "Linus Torvalds" on it. I care whether it is signed by the guy who started the whole thing more than 20 years ago. There would be value in a modified web of trust where, when you receive an e-mail from hipaulshi, you can be certain that it's the same person you replied to on HN. Who cares what her (or his) real name is? In a sense, what you really want for most internet-centric communication is something like certificate pinning. Of course things are different when you're talking about people who you know in person. But for those you don't have to organize key signing parties. And even for people I know in the real world, I would be happy with a solution that just pins the very first public key it sees as long as nothing obviously suspicious is happening. This suffices for 99.9% of use cases. [0] [0] No, this is not sufficient if you know that a government is out to get you. But if it helps to move us into an encryption-by-default setting, it is still a win for the overall ecosystem.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    You need authoritative, external real name because without it, all you can conclude is that if you are being MITMed, it's by the same entity MITMed all your other connections with that person. The alternative would be to confirm the fingerprint of the public key out of band, but lots of entities aren't already authenticated to each other (i.e. I can authenticate my best friend but not Amazon) and don't have a safe/practical way to check each other's public keys.
    - nhaehnle 13y ago
      In practice, 99% of use cases do not have to worry about a MitM attack that is successful 100% of the time. The probability of a MitM attack remaining successful for all your interactions (and that's what would be required for it to go undetected) drops exponentially under a lot of (though admittedly not all) attack scenarios. This is exactly the reasoning behind proposals such as TACK. Edited to add: Keep in mind that external verification basically never happens, as much as cryptographers want it to happen. In the real world, you have a choice between no verification at all and a pinning-based verification which is weaker than the theoretical ideal, but makes MitM'ing significantly harder and much more likely to be detected for everybody at no user interface cost.
hipaulshi 13y ago
Here's the survey to see if people are interested in the meetup. Please register if you are interested. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19p-OY-Q5VKtVD2BVt8QVHMCcBO9XWNrhDnbSV5gKJms/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19p-OY-Q5VKtVD2BVt8QVHMCcBO9...
- hipaulshi 13y ago
  Unfortunately only 2 guys actually signed up so far. So I am pretty sure now PGP is not as popular as it seems in terms of verification purpose. :/
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- hipaulshi 13y ago
  I don't know yet. I am putting up a survey to see if people are interested. I posted the link in the same thread and also in the 'new' section.

So.. Anyone wants to do a PGP key signing party in San Francisco? I asked on HN before but no one seems to be interested back then. I hope some meetup organizer can pick this up.

numlocked 13y ago

No better way than to do it yourself! Create the meet up and submit it here. I'd be up for it.

frewsxcv 13y ago

Yes, I would definitely be interested

steveklabnik 13y ago

I am very interested.

willvarfar 13y ago

I'm curious, how would you verify an attendee's identity?

hipaulshi 13y ago
government id/picture id checking against pgp keyserver, to make sure you are who say you are. So you have to be physically present at the party with your key and id. that's how the trust network is built.
- ywyrd 13y ago
  Yes, because pieces of paper given out by men with guns are the font of all truth. ADD: Fuck this statist cesspool.
  - mirkules 13y ago
    Would you be more comfortable giving your fingerprint or DNA sample to prove your identity? Side note: maybe there could be a way to irreversibly hash one's fingerprint or DNA sample into an electronic signature
    - daveid 13y ago
      Any hashing function would do it, but you leave your fingerprints and DNA anywhere. Would be easy to get access to it and copy.
      - bobbydavid 13y ago
        that's fine, its a public key :)
        daveid 13y ago
        I believe proving identity can only be done using a private key.
    - growse 13y ago
      The problem with that, of course, is that someone's DNA or fingerprint isn't a secret. There's no reason why I couldn't take your fingerprint, embed it into a signature and claim to be you. And this is part of why authentication and identity are very difficult things to do right, mostly because very few people have thought about what it is they're verifying. If I publish a public key and say it belongs to me, 'Bob Smith', the only practical use that has is that you can verify that a future message signed by 'Bob Smith' was signed by someone with access to the same private key as the guy who originally published the public key. Any assumption about who 'Bob Smith' actually is, and who that corresponds to in the real world (what other identities do they assert), and also that 'Bob Smith' is a single entity, are simply assumptions. It's impossible to pin a human down to a single, guaranteed verifiable, non impersonatable and non revocable identity. 'Documents issued by men with guns' isn't foolproof, but we use it as a trust anchor mostly because everyone else does, and we don't have much alternative.
  - krapp 13y ago
    Odd. I don't recall anyone at the DMV forcing my license on me at gunpoint.
  - r0s 13y ago
    I think you mean indifferent bureaucrats without guns.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jlgaddis 13y ago
See "The Keysigning Party HOWTO": http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysi...

GhotiFish 13y ago

"Hello! I'm Fish!" "Hi. I'm Jesus!" "Wow, Jesus? Nice to meet you, can I have your public key?" I don't trust any of you :)

nhaehnle 13y ago
This highlights a huge problem of the PGP/GPG web of trust: It mostly solves the wrong problem. I don't care whether a Linux kernel release is signed by a guy who has government-issued ID that says "Linus Torvalds" on it. I care whether it is signed by the guy who started the whole thing more than 20 years ago. There would be value in a modified web of trust where, when you receive an e-mail from hipaulshi, you can be certain that it's the same person you replied to on HN. Who cares what her (or his) real name is? In a sense, what you really want for most internet-centric communication is something like certificate pinning. Of course things are different when you're talking about people who you know in person. But for those you don't have to organize key signing parties. And even for people I know in the real world, I would be happy with a solution that just pins the very first public key it sees as long as nothing obviously suspicious is happening. This suffices for 99.9% of use cases. [0] [0] No, this is not sufficient if you know that a government is out to get you. But if it helps to move us into an encryption-by-default setting, it is still a win for the overall ecosystem.
- superuser2 13y ago
  You need authoritative, external real name because without it, all you can conclude is that if you are being MITMed, it's by the same entity MITMed all your other connections with that person. The alternative would be to confirm the fingerprint of the public key out of band, but lots of entities aren't already authenticated to each other (i.e. I can authenticate my best friend but not Amazon) and don't have a safe/practical way to check each other's public keys.
  - nhaehnle 13y ago
    In practice, 99% of use cases do not have to worry about a MitM attack that is successful 100% of the time. The probability of a MitM attack remaining successful for all your interactions (and that's what would be required for it to go undetected) drops exponentially under a lot of (though admittedly not all) attack scenarios. This is exactly the reasoning behind proposals such as TACK. Edited to add: Keep in mind that external verification basically never happens, as much as cryptographers want it to happen. In the real world, you have a choice between no verification at all and a pinning-based verification which is weaker than the theoretical ideal, but makes MitM'ing significantly harder and much more likely to be detected for everybody at no user interface cost.

hipaulshi 13y ago

Here's the survey to see if people are interested in the meetup. Please register if you are interested. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19p-OY-Q5VKtVD2BVt8QVHMCcBO9XWNrhDnbSV5gKJms/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19p-OY-Q5VKtVD2BVt8QVHMCcBO9...

hipaulshi 13y ago
Unfortunately only 2 guys actually signed up so far. So I am pretty sure now PGP is not as popular as it seems in terms of verification purpose. :/

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hipaulshi 13y ago
I don't know yet. I am putting up a survey to see if people are interested. I posted the link in the same thread and also in the 'new' section.