[Bitcoin-development] Bitcoin2013 Speakers: Include your PGP fingerprint in your slides

[Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>]

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report: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=205349.0

Every talk will be widely witnessed and videotaped so we can get some
reasonably good security by simply putting out PGP fingerprints in our
slides. Yeah, some fancy attacker could change the videos after the
fact, but the talks themselves will have wide audiences and a lot of
opportunities for fraud to be discovered. That means it'd also be
reasonable for people to sign those keys too if you are present and are
convinced you aren't looking at some impostor. (of course, presenters,
check that your PGP fingerprints are correct...)


Remember that PGP depends on the web-of-trust. No single measure in a
web-of-trust is needs to be absolutely perfect; it's the sum of the
verifications that matter. I don't think it matters much if you have,
say, seen Jeff Garzik's drivers license as much as it matters that you
have seen him in a public place with dozens of witnesses that would
recognize him and call out any attempt at fraud.

Secondly remember that many of us are working on software where an
attacker can steal from huge numbers of users at once if they manage to
sneak some wallet stealing code in. We need better code signing
practices, but they don't help without some way of being sure the keys
signing the code are valid. SSL and certificate authorities have
advantages, and so does the PGP WoT, so use both.


FWIW I take this stuff pretty seriously myself. I generated my key
securely in the first place, I use a hardware smartcard to store my PGP
key, and I keep the master signing key - the key with the ability to
sign other keys - separate from my day-to-day signing subkeys. I also
PGP sign emails regularly, which means anyone can get a decent idea of
if they have the right key by looking at bitcoin-development mailing
list archives and checking the signatures. A truly dedicated attacker
could probably sign something without my knowledge, but I've certainly
raised the bar.

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
000000000000016be577c0f0ce4c04a05fdbfc8e0b6f69053659f32aeea3a518

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