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Keysigning 2016-02-21

Revision as of 21:03, 18 February 2016 by imported>Echarlie (What you need to do in order to attend)

Keysigning party? Keysigning party!

The purpose of this keysigning party is to bring bring together a meeting of people who are interested in cryptography and/or digital privacy with the goal of strengthening the web of trust.

VTLUUG hosts these from time to time to promote cryptography standards such as PGP, to raise awareness of cryptography, and to allow members to authenticate each other for distribution of semi-sensitive information

Time/Date

Plan

Verify identities for signing PGP keys, with food and door prizes.

  • Invite your friends
  • Upload keys to VT keyserver
  • Signing GPG keys (Maybe CACerts too, depending on demand)

What you need to do in order to attend

  • Have a GPG key (if you don't have one, we can help you at a meeting Thursday at 8:30 in TORG 1040 or via IRC on #vtluug)
    • Upload it to the VT keyserver
  • Sign up for the event (Link to come)
  • Bring 2 forms of IDs (Driver's license + Hokie ID will do, for example)
  • >> Read the instructions <<
    • These instructions are dated, and thus are not correct. They *do* provide a good guideline, however, of how this will run.

OpenPGP is a cryptographic standard that allows for secure, confidential, non-reputable, and verifiable communication over an otherwise untrusted medium such as email. This only works, however, if you have some method of verifying that the other party is indeed who they claim to be. This problem is solved through keysigning: you are verifying first hand that the other party's identity and key match as well as declaring this to anyone who trusts you. These interconnected chains of verification form a web of trust and allow secure communication between previously unacquainted or unverified communicators.

If you do not already have an OpenPGP key, please acquire a client and generate one. For the Linux and BSD operating systems, we recommend GnuPG version 2.0 or later or one of its frontends such as GPA or Seahorse. For Windows we suggest Gpg4Win. For OSX we suggest GPG Tools. Follow the associated documentation to generate a keypair.

If you wish to attend, please bring two forms of valid identification as well as paper copies of your fingerprint, if possible.