[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: [Debconf-discuss] DebConf14: Last call for keys for keysigning in Portland, Oregon, USA



On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 08:58:14AM +1000, Aníbal Monsalve Salazar wrote:
> > https://people.debian.org/~anibal/ksp-dc14/ksp-dc14.txt

> > After downloading the files, check the signatures and then the sha256
> > hashes.

> > The webpage at [0] explains how to do that.

> > [0] https://people.debian.org/~anibal/ksp-dc14/ksp-dc14.html

> The encoding for the .txt files is ISO-8859-1.

> Next year it will be UTF-8.

How was this file produced?

caff (from signing-party) has support for reading an annotated
gpgparticipants file as input for ease of signing.  But the file that was
provided for this KSP does not match the format expected by caff (nor the
format generated by current versions of gpgparticipants).

It's a real shame that year over year we aren't getting any better at using
the tools available for running key signing parties efficiently and instead
continue to rely on lots of annoying manual verification and transcription
of checksums on the part of party participants.

It's also a shame that you are publishing supplementary files as part of the
ksp prep that have no relevance to the cryptographic protocol in effect
(such as the condensed file, which is insufficiently condensed for
reasonable printing because it contains information that's superfluous for
note taking, and useless for the actual verification protocol because it
lacks crucial information *and* is not the file we exchange checksums on).

Publishing these supplemental files can only mislead participants into using
them in ways that they should not.

For next year, please correct this.  Publish only the keyring file and the
gpgparticipants output - no superfluous detached signatures, checksum files,
or extra "condensed" text files - and ensure that they work with the
signing-party suite, so that we're able to leverage the work done on
producing small and auditable tools for KSP protocols instead of relying on
excessive and unacceptable amounts of manual and error-prone work on the
part of KSP participants.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: