In light of the recent closure of the .toxicwaste keyserver, I thought that this message from Vess was rather timely. Forwarded message:

From: bontchev@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Vesselin Bontchev) Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.security,comp.security.misc,alt.security.pgp,alt.security.keydist Subject: Re: Keyserver going down Date: 3 Dec 1993 13:14:21 GMT Organization: University of Hamburg -- Germany Message-ID: <2dne3d$ofc@rzsun02.rrz.uni-hamburg.de> References: <WARLORD.93Dec2161745@toxicwaste.mit.edu> <gbeCHFxIy.42F@netcom.com> <2dn9re$6n5@news.mantis.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

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Tony Lezard (tony@mantis.co.uk) writes:

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With both toxicwaste and iastate now out of business, what key servers are still operating?

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The folling list comes straight from keyserv.doc, in the PGP source files

Unfortunately, I have the impression that the information there is slightly out-of-date. I would prefer to get a direct reply to the question asked from the people who run the keyservers.

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archive. I must say, although I'm not one for conspicacy theories, the sudden and unexplained closure of *two* key servers in such a short time does make me a bit ... suspicious. Why were they closed?

Yes, me too... Two keyservers, both in the USA, both were closed with no explications given, both were closed rather fast... Is it what we're all thinking about or are we just paranoid?

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Internet sites:

[list deleted]

I have installed a public key server at our site as an experiment. It took quite a long time, because I am not root on our machine and a regular user installing such software is not a trivial task and has some security implications.

Till now, our server was syncronized only with one of the US ones. Now, after two US servers have been closed down, I would like to activate ours and to syncronise it with all other servers around the world. It is currently working (you can get and send public keys); it is just not syncronized with the other servers.

Could please those who are running such servers and agree to have them syncronized with ours contact me, so that I can include their site in my CONFIG file?

The information for our server is:

pgp-public-keys@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de Vesselin Bontchev bontchev@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de FTP: ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de:/pub/virus/misc/pubkring.pgp

Requests to the server are processed every 15 minutes.

Regards, Vesselin - -- Vesselin Vladimirov Bontchev Virus Test Center, University of Hamburg Tel.:+49-40-54715-224, Fax: +49-40-54715-226 Fachbereich Informatik - AGN < PGP 2.3 public key available on request. > Vogt-Koelln-Strasse 30, rm. 107 C e-mail: bontchev@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de 22527 Hamburg, Germany

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