Digital signatures

[David Boles]

on 7/12/2007 10:12 PM, Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Tim wrote:
>> Yeah, I know.  It makes it hard for a second person to say that
>> they're John Doe, but it's still dead easy for one person to say
>> they are, in the first place.
>>
>> If another person decide they're going to claim their John Doe, make
>> a GPG/PGP key for their John Doe persona, their signed e-mails will
>> show up as being valid.  They are, they person who made *their* key
>> also made their message.  It's a different key than the other John
>> Doe, of course, but your mail &/or GPG/PGP client doesn't do that
>> sort of check.
> 
> If you've got a gpg plugin for your mail that doesn't do this sort of
> check and provide a way to alert the user to the fact that the keys
> don't match, then that plugin is crap.
> 
> It's also possible that many users don't understand how to work with
> the pgp system and thus they ignore important pieces of information.
> There is some amount of work that needs to be done by each user in
> order to avoid various pitfalls.
> 
> I can assure you that if you signed your messages and I cared about
> verifying them, that I would notice very easily if someone else sent
> me signed message using the same name and address on a different key.
> :)
> 
>> I haven't looked to closely at the packages, I'd hope however the
>> repos are managed do that.
> 
> As I understand it, currently the signing of packages for updates is
> done manually by the admins.  There is work afoot to create a signing
> server[1] which will be able to help automate this process.
> Obviously, keeping such a system secure is very important.
> 
>> But have a look at the update notices.  Those are signed by the
>> person maintaining that package, I've only seen self-signed
>> messages.  None with a countersign to their signature.
> 
> Where are those at?  I don't subscribe to the package announcement
> list and looking at the archives I didn't see any signtures, so either
> I'm not looking at what you're talking about or the list software is
> filtering the sigs.
> 
> I don't think that individual maintainers sign the announcement
> messages, at least I never saw that in any of the maintainer docs I've
> seen on pushing updates.  I'm genuinely curious to know what notices
> you're referring to.
> 
> [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating/SigningServerSpecDraft

FYI Tim.  Todd is Todd. He checks out. I still don't know just who you are
however.  ;-)

-- 

  David

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