Rackspace Keysigning Party

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Date, Time and Location

  • Thursday, October 24, 2013 at 18:30 - 20:30
  • Where: Rackspace Office -- 755 University City Blvd (University Mall/Math Empo)

What is it about

  • Signing GPG keys (Maybe CACerts too, depending on demand)
  • Meeting interesting people who work for Rackspace
  • Pizza

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 or via IRC on #vtluug
  • Sign up for the event
  • Bring 2 forms of IDs (Driver's license + Hokie ID will do, for example)
  • >> Read the instructions <<

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.

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 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.