Topic: Crypto News, plus our annual PGP/GnuPG Key-Signing Party
Moderator: Bill Ricker
Location: MIT Building E-51, Room 335
Please note that Wadsworth St is open from Memorial Drive to Amherst St,
but is closed between Amherst St to Main St. See the ling below for
additional details.
https://courbanize.com/projects/mit-kendall-square/updates
Summary:
Bill's annual crypto talk, PGP keysigning party. Register your key in
advance to participate!
Abstract:
Bill reviews recent crypto news from the past year, and some crypto history.
Cryptography News Highlights since the last year; e.g.,
top named vulnerabilities
preparing for post-Quantum cryptography
books on Eliz. S. Friedman released (wrto Hidden Figures)
The history portion may include horse farms, pumpkin patches, IBM
punch-card accounting, and catching atom spies; or the Hidden Figures
book connections; or something else entirely.
Following Bill's presentation, we hold our annual keysigning party.
------------------------ Additional information from Bill
* We will NO LONGER sign RSA or DSA 1024b keys (or shorter). Obsolete.
* We will NOT sign RSA 2048b keys without expiration dates
or with expiration dates beyond 2020.
* Use RSA 4096 or ed25519 for gpg2 --gen-key
Notes
* If concerned about well-capitalized massive factoring dictionaries,
subtract a small multiple of 8 bits to get a size that is not standard
and thus won't be dictionaried.
* Alas the one trustworthy ECC curve, ed25519, is supported only in
GPG 2.1.7+ (gpg2), but if you have recent Ubuntu you you can use it now.
See https://nickhu.co.uk/posts/2016-09-03-curvy-gpg/
<https://nickhu.co.uk/posts/2016-09-03-curvy-gpg/> for instructions
GPG2 gives a warning that it's not yet standardized so i'm considering
it still somewhat expriemental ... i'm going to try a 10y expiring on this
———————-
A key signing party is a get-together of people who use the PGP
encryption system with the purpose of allowing those people to sign each
others keys. Key signing parties serve to extend the web of trust to a
great degree. Key signing parties also serve as great opportunities to
discuss the political and social issues surrounding strong cryptography,
individual liberties, individual sovereignty, and even implementing
encryption technologies or perhaps future work on free encryption software.
The basic workflow of signing someone's key is as follows:
Verify that the person actually is who they claim to be;
Have them verify their key ID and fingerprint;
Sign their key;
Send the signed key back to them
At the meeting, we go through the first two steps. Each person who
preregistered their key will announce their presence and then read off
their key ID and fingerprint, so everyone can verify that their copy of
the list of keys is correct. Once we've run down the list, we line up,
and each of us examines everyone else's photo IDs to verify that they
are who they claim to be. After the meeting is over, each participant
can then retrieve the keys that they've personally verified, sign those
keys, and send the signed keys back to their respective owners.
In order to complete the keysigning in the allotted time, we follow a
formal procedure as seen in V. Alex Brennen's "GnuPG Keysigning Party
HOWTO":
https://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html.
It is strongly advised that if you have not been to a keysigning party
before, you read this document: http://blu.org/keysignings/. We're using
the List-based method for this keysigning party, and the keyserver at
subkeys.pgp.net.
It is essential that, before the meeting, you register on the signup
form listed in the attachments. You should bring at least one picture ID
with you. You must also bring your own printout of the report on that
page, so you can check off the names/keys of the people you have
personally verified.
The list will be printed on Wednesday afternoon, the day of the meeting;
be sure to register your key for the keysigning before that. The
official cutoff time is 3:00 pm.
For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Parking:
MIT lots require permits after hours.
All Cambridge parking meters use Passport by Phone:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/traffic/Parking/paybyphone
This is active on all Cambridge metered parking spaces. Meters are free
after 8PM
For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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