On Sun, 29 Nov 92 14:03:25 -0800, karn@qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) said:
Phil> People need to be very selective about the signatures Phil> they sign, otherwise they will become meaningless. I've Phil> already had people sign my public key without any Phil> verification that it is legit. This is a no-no. I am Phil> bothered by the message that PGP currently generates Phil> when it reads in some new public keys asking if you'd Phil> like to certify each new key. Even though the default is Phil> "no", it makes it too easy to sign a key without really Phil> verifying its authenticity. I have to echo Phil's comments here. One of the things that might be worth a few minutes is for this group to hash out (pun intended) a set of guidelines for "when it's o.k. to sign a key". I have been talking to some people about personal applications of cryptographic technology, and I'm frequently surprised when even people with a DP security background want to rush to certify keys they've received via email, etc. I'm thinking something along the lines of "If I'm in a real-time communications mechanism, and on the phone at the same time, and I receive their key at the moment when they told me they hit the return key - then it's probably theirs"...It would be prohibitive to list all of the possible permutations, but it might go a long way toward building the right habits if we brainstormed about a few firm guidelines for the uninitiated as to what constitutes responsible key management. I confess to some personal bias, because I know the PEM folks are watching to see how robust our key distribution "web" becomes over the course of its evolution, and I'd like to be able to show them a convincing argument against centralized key management, empirically... --Strat