James Howard

The most important thing to learn in statistics is there are no yes/no answers. Only maybes, to some degree.

Or not quite. I had a need to generate MD5 hashes inside a Google Spreadsheet, but Google does not include an MD5 function (and neither does OpenOffice.org). Google does, however, support a function to get XML data and process it with Xpath. So assuming someone had created an MD5 generator on the web that was accessible via XML, I set to work. It turns out, nobody has ever needed this before. But that’s okay, I am a Real Programmer.

I installed Ruby on Rails and created a very simple controller for hashes:

class HashController < ApplicationController
    def md5
    result = { }
    result['data'] = params[:id]
    result['md5'] = Digest::MD5.hexdigest(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|
        format.json { render :json => result }
        format.xml { render :xml => result }
    end
end

Which is now accessible via http://api.jameshoward.us/hash/md5/foo.json or foo.xml as appropriate. In addition, there is an sha1 method available. It’s all running on a minimal instance with Heroku, so please use it to your heart’s content.

MacOS X provides a commnad line tool to open applications and files. MacOS X applications are actually collections of files residing within one directory with a name ending in .app. I usually use open at the command line to start most applications, leaving the Dock clear of applications not running:

howardjp@thermopylae:~$ open /Applications/Safari.app

is enough to start Safari and if the browser is already running, it will open a new window.

The open command also works on individual files and will open the file in its associated application. For instance, running open on a PDF will open the file in Preview. And running open on a normal directory (as opposed to an application package) will open the directory in Finder.

The open command provides a number of useful options. The option t treats the file, regardless of type, as a text file and opens it in the default text editor. A related option, e simplifies the process and opens the file in TextEdit, the native text editor provided with MacOS X. Also related is f, which reads from the standard input and passes the input to the default text editor.

It is also possible to override the default application with other types of files using the option a. But it is important to remember the full path to the application must be given:

open -a /Applications/Adobe\ Reader\ 9/Adobe\ Reader.app/ foo.pdf

This form is quite cumbersome, but it may be appropriate in some circumstances. One last option worth mentioning is R which find the references file in Finder, instead of opening the file itself. Of course, open supports other options as well and reveiwing the man page is advised.

Finally, the open supports URLs:

open http://www.jameshoward.us

will open my website directly in the default browser.

John Gruber:

If you want to pay the New York Times to read the news using both their iPhone and iPad apps, in theory, you should be their ideal customer — you’re willing to pay, and you’re looking forward, technology-wise. But you’ll save money by getting several pounds of paper that you don’t want delivered to your doorstep every week.

Put a vacation stop on the order and donate the papers to a school.

• ChaseKBH: Moon...BOOM!
• Me: Moon boom‽ What are you, some kind of Bond villain‽

MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN… MATHMAN…

The Unix command line has historically interacted poorly with the numerous graphical interfaces that have been stacked upon it. One key area lacking support is the clipboard. MacOS X brings two utilities to close that gap, pbcopy and pbpaste. These commands together provide complete access to the MacOS X clipboard (which Apple calls the pasteboard, explaining the names of these two commands).

The first of the two, pbcopy, takes its input from the standard input and adds it to the system clipboard. The command only accepts one option, -pboard, which accepts one of four suboptions, “general”, “ruler”, “find”, and “font”, all of which are different system clipboards available on MacOS X. The general pasteboard is the main system clipboard and the others are for special use.

The pbpaste pulls data from the clipboard and prints it to the standard output. Like pbcopy, pbpaste accepts the option -pboard to determine which pastebaord to acquire data from. The pbpaste command adds a second option, -Prefer which takes three possible options “txt”, “rtf”, and “ps”. These options direct \cmd{pbpaste} looks for a certain type of formated information on the pbasteboard. The “txt” flag suggests standard text data. The “rtf” and “ps” suggest Rich Text Format and PostScript, respectively. Despite this option, it is not possible to direct the exact output pbpaste prints. This option only tells pbpaste what type of information to return first.

These two commands offer the MacOS X command line warrior a simple and fairly complete set of tools for working with and manipulating the MacOS X pasteboards.

• Me: Lunch!
• ChaseKBH: Yeah!
• Me: With lemon!
• ChaseKBH: Yeah!
• Me: And pepper!
• ChaseKBH: Yeah!
• Me: And garlic!
• ChaseKBH: Yeah!
• Me: And pasta!
• ChaseKBH: Yeah!
• Me: And shrimp!
• ChaseKBH: No, no, no!

According to a witness quoted on the Web sites of The Minnesota Daily and Chicago Breaking Sports, Douglas P. Dokken, a math professor at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minn., was watching a gymnastics competition when Goldy tapped him on the shoulder and mussed his hair. Mr. Dokken, who got his Ph.D. at Minnesota, apparently tried to ignore the attention, but the oversized rodent persisted, and the professor ended up losing his temper and thumping the mascot.

A few months ago, I created a Twitter to automatically announce the DC operating status maintained by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This status announces whether or not the Federal government is open or restricted during an emergency. It is most often used to announce snow-related closings and some non-governmental employers rely on this for notifying their employees of weather-related emergencies.. This provides an advantage over other delivery methods provided by OPM in that Twitter can deliverer selected user’s tweets via a text message.

After testing for a few emergencies with (now) 15 followers, I am ready to announce @opmdcstatus publicly. If anyone at OPM wants to discuss making this more effective and efficient, please contact me.

If you find yourself in the Columbia, MD area looking for something to do from 6:30-9pm (January 12th) join the Columbia Area Linux Users Group for a great talk from James P. Howard II and Peter M. Van Buren. They will be presenting their talk “Using DVCS Frameworks for Homogeneous Systems Management” to us.

openpgpblog:

For reasons I cannot entirely justify, I created a new Twitter account, @OpenPGPBot, that automatically retweets anything posted involving PGP, GnuPGP, or OpenPGP. Please follow if it’s your thing.

I get something like 7-12 contacts from recruiters every week and about half of those are cold calls direct to my cell phone. I spend a lot of time responding to job inquiries. I welcome the opportunity to discuss a new option, but most recruiters seem to go out of their way to turn me off to their services. Here’s some advice:

1. If you found my profile on Monster, CareerBuilder, or some other job board, you might note I said no relocation from the the Baltimore-Washington area. So please don’t contact me about a job in East Liverpool, Idaho. If I wanted to move to Idaho, I’d say so.
2. If you have my profile in front of you, it does say I am currently employed in a regular position. So don’t call me about a 2-month contract. Don’t call me about a contract-to-hire position. Call me about actual jobs.
3. When you call me about the 2-month contract, make sure it pays more than one-third of what I am currently making.
4. Make sure you actually know what my specialty areas are before you call me.
5. When you call me, don’t ask why I am interested in leaving my current position. You called me. That’s why we are having the discussion.
6. When you call me about a specific position, make sure you actually know the following:
   1. Who the position is with;
   2. What the position is;
   3. When the position needs to be filled;
   4. Where the position is; and
   5. Why the position exists.
7. Don’t contact me to ask me to fill out a form on your website. It’s a scam. We both know it.
8. Don’t ask for my resume in Word format. Actually, let’s go into detail here:
   1. You already have a copy of my resume you got from who knows where. It should explain that I am math and computer science geek. When you see this, you should assume my resume is stored in two cross-referenced databases and automatically generated from a stack of build scripts that create a LaTeX source and generate a hyperlinked PDF.
   2. I know you just want a Word document to take the information, rewrite it, and slap your own branding on it, but it is unethical to present me in any way to a client without my prior review. And I’d be an idiot to let you.
   3. Given this, if you can’t figure out how to get the information out of a PDF, how did you manage to dial the phone?
9. If you’ve contacted me for more information, and I provided it, call me back at some point and let me know what’s going on. Disappearing into the aether gives you, your employer, and your client a really bad reputation. I do spread it.

Even in a down economy, you don’t piss off the talent. They are, after all, your product.

Tonight, Dave Bittner hosted “Conversation on Art and Culture in Downtown Columbia” for the Columbia Cultural Plan Advisory Committee. The event was a large-scale coordinated focus group to ask what cultural resources Columbians need and want.

A prevailing theme that came out of each discussion was the need for good transportation to and from the cultural attractions. Seniors were interested in transportation options, likely mass transit, for easy access. Those outside of Town Center were interested in better parking throughout downtown for cultural attractions. Everyone was worried about the traffic brought by events at Merriweather. This topic and related genres came up again and again, completely independently as each working group appears to have revisited the issue.

I am not an urban planner, but this seems important.

There’s been some irresponsible fearmongering on the opinion pages of the FT where Stephen Lange Ranzini wrote:

According to credible news reports, the large blackout in 2003 that shut down the north east and midwest of the US as far as Michigan was caused by a cyber hack.

In response, I’ve written the following to the editor of the FT:

Sir, it is astounding the FT would print as ill-considered and ill-researched letter as Stephen Ranzini’s. Mr Ranzini says “credible news reports” pinned the August 2003 US blackout on cyberhackers. No credible news report printed anything this irresponsible and no responsible party ever suggested something so foolish. The joint US-Canada task force on the outage considered this matter and dismissed it out of hand. The universally acknowledged cause were untrimmed trees in the midwest. But in recent years, we’ve learned the security establishment isn’t the only one that cries wolf. We’ve learned bankers do, too.

I received an email today saying FreeGrep is now standard in Minix 3!

Proving no good deed goes unpunished, I left a small bug in FreeGrep v1.0. It has been fixed and updated to 1.1 and also submitted for update in the FreeBSD Ports Tree.

This morning, GitHub user gautambt ported FreeGrep to Minix 3. While the build system leaves something to be desired, I remain resolute in my desire to never learn Autoconf. I have pulled gautambt’s changes into the master branch on GitHub.

In related news, I figured that after 12 years, it was time to let this thing graduate. So I cut a new release and have blessed it as version 1.0. The release should build cleanly on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Minix 3. Compiling by hand, it will also build on OS X. You can download FreeGrep 1.0 from GitHub and ftp://ftp.jameshoward.us/pub/howardjp/grep/.

I have set up a small FTP site for numerous small programs I either wrote or was once responsible for. Or still am.

For reasons I cannot entirely justify, I created a new Twitter account, @OpenPGPBot, that automatically retweets anything posted involving PGP, GnuPGP, or OpenPGP. Please follow if it’s your thing.

Systems are only as secure as you make them. Thankfully, FreeBSD offers an excellent range of tools and mechanisms to insure that all your security needs are met.

Jacques Manukyan writes in the new issue of BSD Magazine. PDF download of the entire magazine available at the link.

PGP Corporation’s Perspectives Blog offers some insight on how new cloud-based products can be secure and offer identity management (in a curiously unsigned post).  The first generation of products we have seen centers on API keys, except for a few products which require you to submit your username and password for remote use.  Both of these solutions are insecure for the same reasons.

Lately, a few cloud products at the bleeding edge of development have offered a new solution. GitHub, BitBucket, and Heroku have offered authentication solutions based on SSH keys. While these are development tools, their inherent focus on distributed data management suggests where next generation cloud services will solve authentication problems.

Lately, I’ve been working in Git for version control and one of the more interesting features is the ability to sign source code tags.  Git is a distributed repository system and consequently, it is impossible to know if a given copy of the repository is official in any sense of the work.  Cryptographic signatures alleviates this problem and Git uses GPG to do it.

First, is is necessary to tell Git about your key:

howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$ git config user.signingkey 0x3EE4249E
howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$ git config --get user.signingkey
0x3EE4249E
howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$

Then, create a tag giving the -s option:

howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$ git tag -s commit.infodisplay 0839c680c7d2821753ae684874abf83aaaba6f32
.git/TAG_EDITMSG: unmodified: line 4
:a
This tag represents a finalized commit.infodisplay variable.
.
:x
.git/TAG_EDITMSG: 5 lines, 88 characters

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "James Patrick Howard, II"
2048-bit RSA key, ID 0x3EE4249E, created 2009-08-30 (main key ID 0xE6602099)

howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$

Since my password was cached by GPG Agent, I do not need to enter it. And it’s that simple. To verify a tag, give a tag name and the -v option:

howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$ git tag -v commit.infodisplay
object 589c8efd5bec637050ddaadae9471c15601738cb
type commit
tag commit.infodisplay
tagger James P. Howard, II  1261089522 -0500

This tag represents a finalized commit.infodisplay variable.
gpg: Signature made Thu Dec 17 17:38:42 2009 EST
gpg:                using RSA key 0x3EE4249E
gpg: Good signature from "James Patrick Howard, II" [ultimate]
howardjp@byzantine:~/src/git$

When Git signs a tag, it creates an object to represent the tag and also adds the entire history of the repository leading up to the tag. This is important because the signature then verifies an entire line of development allowing distributed sources trees that can be trusted.

Dan Mahoney has written a new overview of publishing PGP keys via DNS:

Publishing PGP keys is a pain. There are many disjoint keyservers, three or four networks of which, which do (or don’t) share information with each other. Some are corporate, some are private. And it’s a crapshoot as to whose key is going to be on which, or worse, which will have the latest copy of a person’s key.

For a long time, GPG has had a way to publish keys in DNS, but it hasn’t been well documented. This document hopes to change that.

I do not work with DNS much any more, so I have not tried it.

This blog is about identity and social media touches on that. Small and medium sized enterprises (SME) are all over social media, and rightfully so. Social media provides SMEs the opportunity to level the advertising playing field and work directly with potential customers. And having a presence in multiple networks is equally critical, since the users are everywhere.

Quite a few, I’ve noticed, don’t get it. I have received a handful of friend requests on Facebook from businesses, despite the fact Facebook prohibits the use of personal accounts without a personal identity attached. Facebook provides a mechanism for businesses through “Pages.” But what surprised me recently was a business with a personal profile on LinkedIn, and it has 25 connections. The business also had a company profile on LinkedIn, which was up to date. SMEs would be better off using the business profile pages established for that purpose, as they usually are bettered geared at presenting business data. After all, you may be married to your work, but Facebook ought not say it is married to you.

OpenPGP provides the ability to associate a key with multiple email addresses.  This is handy if you are both john.doe@example.com and jd@example.com at work and adding both identities to your OpenPGP key is best because you cannot control what address outsiders use for you.  But you might also have a personal email account at Gmail or Hotmail.  Should you add this identity to the same key as your work addresses?

If the key is only used to provide digital signatures, the only question is whether you want the email address to actually be associated with you. If your personal email address is john.doe@gmail.com or something similarly innocuous, you will be fine.

But encryption keys are another matter. If a recipient has multiple encryption subkeys on their OpenPGP key, they cannot specify a prefered key for any purpose. The sender is free to choose. So one subkey cannot be designated as professional versus another. As a result, an employer may well suggest that an encryption subkey stays with the business, since a subkey will always decrypt corresponding ciphertext, even if revoked.

There are a few considerations that suggest it may not be worth while, however. Encryption tools are not electronic methods for solving social problems. If an employee wants to steal data from the business, forcing them to use separate keys will not prevent them doing so. Especially since they may steal deciphered plain text or even the encryption keys. And employers may need to securely contact employees in a personal capacity, for instance, during a continuity of operations event, and establishing a consistent set of trusted keys for personnel can smooth communications.

Though not necessary for most modern users of PGP, understanding PGP key versions can enlighten other questions.  There are two key versions which are relevant:  PGP Version 3 (V3) and PGP Version 4 (V4).  V4 keys were introduced by NAI’s PGP 5.0, which the OpenPGP standard is based on.  The standard refers to V3 keys as “old format” and V4 keys as “new format.”

New format keys offer many advantages over old format keys.  This includes the inclusion of many different subpackets that can be attached to a public key, sort of addendums to the key, which can specify information such as prefered hash algorithm, preferred key server, or revocation information.  As GnuPG and PGP versions since at least 2000 have used new format keys by default, there is little concern here about which key format to use.  However, some outstanding keys predate the OpenPGP standard and are still in use today.  These keys are acceptable for use provided the owner accepts the key as their own.

In contrast to the multiple assurer model, there is a single assurance model. The most interesting of the single assurer models is the Gossamer Spider Web of Trust, or GSWoT, which calls its assurers introducers. Like CAcert and Thawte, GSWoT introducers are volunteers who perform assurances as a part of other activities. GSWoT introducers, however, do not earn points and are drawn from the ranks of CAcert and Thawte assurers. This process enables GSWoT to recruit those already well-versed in identity management best practices.

GSWoT only works within the PGP web of trust by relying on the OpenPGP’s specification for depth of trust. GSWoT users can download the GSWoT keyring, which includes introducers, and a metakey for the entire GSWoT network. The user should issue a trusted signature to the GSWoT metakey with a trust depth of 2. The GSWoT metakey signs an introducer’s keys with a trust level of 1. From then on, the user who downloaded the GSWoT keyring will find valid keys for anyone signed by any GSWoT introducer. GSWoT introducers are expected to hold high standards when issuing signatures to ensure the Gossamer Spider Web of Trust does not become polluted. Additionally, GSWoT introducers cross sign each other’s keys to tighten the web of trust knot surrounding its volunteers.

There is significant overlap with both the CAcert and Thawte web of trust networks among GSWoT introducers. But unlike CAcert and Thawte, there is no single organization that continues to monitor and issue signatures representing the web of trust. Provided a copy of the GSWoT keyring, anyone can verify the validity of a signature indefinetly. For PGP users, the GSWoT keyring and the CAcert PGP key (which should be trust-signed with a trust depth of 1), provide a web of trust that is remarkably fault tolerant, massively distributed worldwide, and freely accessible by any Internet user.

Earlier this week, I changed my profile picture on Twitter, Facebook, and other websites and decided the photo on my PGP key should match. This is a quick tutorial on PGP key photos.

PGP keys permit photos to be recorded on the key and are treated like other user ids, in that they can be signed by others. Image types are limited to JPEG. Generally, it is a set it and forget it process. So first we should remove the existing photo:

howardjp@thermopylae:/tmp/gpg$ gpg --edit --expert 0xE6602099

Secret key is available.

pub  4096R/0xE6602099  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: C   
                       trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
sub  2048R/0xFCB31625  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: E   
sub  2048R/0xA40883BA  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: A   
sub  2048R/0x2C3602D7  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: S   
sub  2048R/0x3EE4249E  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: S   
[ultimate] (1). James Patrick Howard, II
[ultimate] (2)  James Patrick Howard, II <howard5@umbc.edu>
[ultimate] (3)  James Patrick Howard, II <jh@jameshoward.us>
[ultimate] (4)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@gmail.com>
[ultimate] (5)  James Patrick Howard, II <jphoward@jphoward.com>
[ultimate] (6)  James Patrick Howard, II <james.howard@ubalt.edu>
[ultimate] (7)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@terpalum.umd.edu>
[ultimate] (8)  James Patrick Howard, II (GSWoT:US72) <howardjp@gswot.org>
[ultimate] (9)  [jpeg image of size 18245]
[ultimate] (10)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@miamialum.org>

Everything looks fine so far, so let’s select the photo as a userid and revoke it (from here, output will be abbreviated:

Command> 9

pub  4096R/0xE6602099  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: C   
                       trust: ultimate      validity: ultimat
[ultimate] (8)  James Patrick Howard, II (GSWoT:US72) <howardjp@gswot.org>
[ultimate] (9)* [jpeg image of size 18245]
[ultimate] (10)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@miamialum.org>
Command> revuid

And now GPG will ask if I really want to do this, why, and give me the new key:

Really revoke this user ID? (y/N) y

Please select the reason for the revocation:
  0 = No reason specified
  4 = User ID is no longer valid
  Q = Cancel
(Probably you want to select 4 here)
Your decision? 4
Enter an optional description; end it with an empty line:
> Image is being updated.
>                        
Reason for revocation: User ID is no longer valid
Image is being updated.
Is this okay? (y/N)                  

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "James Patrick Howard, II"
4096-bit RSA key, ID 0xE6602099, created 2009-08-30

pub  4096R/0xE6602099  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: C   
                       trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
[ultimate] (8)  James Patrick Howard, II (GSWoT:US72) <howardjp@gswot.org>
[ revoked] (9)  [jpeg image of size 18245]
[ultimate] (10)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@miamialum.org>

So everything looks great, let’s add a new one:

Command> addphoto

Pick an image to use for your photo ID.  The image must be a JPEG file.
Remember that the image is stored within your public key.  If you use 
very large picture, your key will become very large as well!

Keeping the image close to 240x288 is a good size to use.

Enter JPEG filename for photo ID: jph.jpg
This JPEG is really large (44219 bytes) !
Are you sure you want to use it? (y/N) y

Since nobody actually reads keys to each other, I don’t mind a nice large color picture, but it is worth noting it is only 225x225 pixels.

Is this photo correct (y/N/q)? y        

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "James Patrick Howard, II"
4096-bit RSA key, ID 0xE6602099, created 2009-08-30

pub  4096R/0xE6602099  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: C   
                       trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
[ultimate] (8)  James Patrick Howard, II (GSWoT:US72) <howardjp@gswot.org>
[ revoked] (9)  [jpeg image of size 18245]
[ultimate] (10)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@miamialum.org>
[ unknown] (11)  [jpeg image of size 44219]

The validity is unknown, because it has not been recalculated yet. This is easy to fix by restarting GPG. Don’t forget to save your work:

Command> save

howardjp@thermopylae:/tmp/gpg$ gpg --edit --expert 0xE6602099
Secret key is available.

gpg: checking the trustdb
gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, PGP trust model
gpg: depth: 0  valid:   2  signed:   2  trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 2u
gpg: depth: 1  valid:   2  signed:   2  trust: 2-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 0u
pub  4096R/0xE6602099  created: 2009-08-30  expires: never       usage: C   
                       trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
[ultimate] (8)  James Patrick Howard, II (GSWoT:US72) <howardjp@gswot.org>
[ revoked] (9)  [jpeg image of size 18245]
[ultimate] (10)  James Patrick Howard, II <howardjp@miamialum.org>
[ultimate] (11)  [jpeg image of size 44219]

Command> quit

And you’re done!

Identity assurance systems are surprisingly interesting. Two, which work in basically the same way, are CAcert and the Thawte Web of Trust. In each system, a person can register for a free account through the web and is then required to obtain points from assurers. Assurers work as volunteers, though some may charge small fees for their work.  Many assurers are certified to grant points within both systems.

Assurers will meet with a person, and request to see photographic identification, such as a passport, and is required to document what type of identification is presented. The assurer may assign up to 35 points to the person met based on their own seniority in the system and satisfaction with proof of identity.

Once a person has collected at least 50 points, either system will issue them a signed X.509 certificate the person can use for S/MIME email or certificate-based logins, that includes their name and email address. If a person can collect 100 points, they may themselves become an assurer within the system The requirements for multiple assurers’ certification prevents a single rogue assurer from poisoning the well of certificates issued by the system. At least two assurers are necessary. In these respects, both CAcert’s and Thawte’s systems are identical.

There are several differences worth noting.  First, Thawte certificates are widely accepted by the default configuration on desktop PCs.  However, CAcert certificates are not widely accepted and will only be accepted if the user has installed CAcert’s root certificates.  CAcert is aware of this and pushing for inclusion in more software.  CAcert also issues website SSL certificates for servers, and code signing certificates for applications developers.

Additionally, CAcert offers PGP key signatures for verified email addresses from the CAcert PGP key.  CAcert’s PGP certifications are available to users with at least 50 assurance points.

Last month, Thawte announced the termination of their service and offered users a free one year certificate through Verisign.  The service no longer accepts new enrollments.

The above was written primarily before Thawte’s announcement.

Below is a highly abbreviated output of gpg --list-sigs for my public key, 0xE6602099, specifically the output for user identity jh@jameshoward.us:

pub   4096R/E6602099 2009-08-30
uid                  James Patrick Howard, II <jh@jameshoward.us>
sig 2      1 3C4A1809 2009-09-02  GSWoT - Gossamer Spider Web of Trust
sig 3      1 6126D1F5 2009-08-30  James Patrick Howard, II
sig     P    65D0FD58 2009-08-30  CA Cert Signing Authority (Root CA) 
sig       X  CA57AD7C 2009-09-03  PGP Global Directory Verification Key
sig       X  CA57AD7C 2009-09-16  PGP Global Directory Verification Key
sig 3        E6602099 2009-08-30  James Patrick Howard, II

One signature worth noting is the self signature from 0x6126D1F5.  This offers users of my public key assurance that I approve of tying this user identity, including the email address, to me.  Two others, from 0x3C4A1809 and 0x65D0FD58 are the root keys for the Gossamer Spider Web of Trust and CAcert, respectively.

But also included are three signatures from 0xCA57AD7C, the PGP Global Directory Verification Key.  PGP Corporation runs a unique keyserver, that unlike others, does not retain historical data.  The server will send an verification message to each email address on the key.  Once an address is verified, the Global Directory records this for future use.  When downloading a key later, any verified address is signed at download time by the PGP Global Directory Verification Key.

The unique aspect of this is the short time to live for these certifications.  Signatures from the Global Directory are set to expire two weeks after creation, though they will be recreated the next time the key is fetched.  As a result, some keys in the wild have numerous PGP Global Directory Verification Key signatures embedded.  For instance, the most recent copy of the CAcert key above has 114 certifications from the PGP Global Directory included.

PGP acknowledges this method of verification has limitations. But for a first level identity check, especially when the email address is known and available, this method can provide a quick and dirty check for a valid key.

This is a new blog dedicated to OpenPGP and related topics.  OpenPGP, itself, is a standard for encrypting and signing digital data.  Some of the related issues might include identity management, X.509, and even social media.

I started this because so much of the material surrounding OpenPGP is so poorly documented.  While several books exist, they do not provide much insight into the nuances of signing data and none provide a lot of resources for those interested in more than encrypting a few emails.

This blog will cover a lot of topics from key generation and types to certificate authorities and probably some other interesting things coming over the horizon.  Posts will probably run about once a week, usually on Tuesdays.