[Fsuk-manchester] Christmas Social - 16th Dec - Key‐signing

[Simon Ward]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 08:47:33PM +0000, Lucy wrote:
> Additionally, if people are interested there will be an informal
> keysigning party.

This will be an ad‐hoc exchange of key fingerprints and verification of
identity.  If you wish to take part, please bring:

  * Yourself
  * Several copies of your key fingerprint, preferrably including the
    UIDs you would like signing.
  * Preferrably some recognisable photo identification (e.g. passport,
    driving licence)[1].

To get your key fingerprint and UIDs, you can use the following command:

  gpg --fingerprint YOUR-KEYID

or, you can use ‘gpg-key2ps’, found in the ‘signing-party’[2] package on
Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu, to get a pageful:

  gpg-key2ps YOUR-KEYID

Another good tool from that package is ‘caff’, which helps when signing
and sending out keys after a key‐signing party.

If you don’t have an OpenPGP key pair, you can run the following command:

  gpg --gen-key

You’ll be prompted with some questions, and unless you fully understand
them you should just go with the defaults.  Then you’ll be prompted for
your name, email address, and a comment (which can be left blank).

If you prefer a GUI, look for GPA or Seahorse, Enigmail for Thunderbird
or another GUI front‐end listed on the GnuPG web site[3].  They often
have interfaces for creating new key pairs.

To find out more on using gnupg good first reads are the Keysigning
Party Howto[4], GnuPG Mini Howto[5] and the GNU Privacy Handbook[6].
There’s also reasonable‐looking howto in Ubuntu’s community
documentation[7].  If you really want to go to town with your bedtime
reading, take a look at the links on the Biglumber site[8].

If you’re interested in using OpenPGP, but this is a bit much to start
with, I and posssibly a few others can run through creating and using
OpenPGP keys.

[1]: People have different requirements for signing keys, and photo ID
     is a common one, though not actually necessary.  Preferrably you
     would know the person whose key you wish to sign, and can without a
     doubt vouch for their identity.  Failing that, you may require one
     or more forms of identification so that you can be resonably sure
     of the signee’s identity.
[2]: http://pgp-tools.alioth.debian.org/
[3]: http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/frontends.en.html#gui
[4]: http://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html
[5]: http://www.dewinter.com/gnupg_howto/english/GPGMiniHowto.html
[6]: http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html
[7]: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GnuPrivacyGuardHowto
[8]: https://biglumber.com/x/web?links=1

Simon Ward
-- 
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.—John Gall

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