Participants of a large key signing party line up in preparation to verify each other's identities prior to signing.

In cryptography, a key signing party is an event at which people present their PGP-compatible keys to others in person, who, if they are confident the key actually belongs to the person who claims it, digitally signs the PGP certificate containing that public key and the person's name, etc. This is one way to strengthen the web of trust. Although PGP keys are generally used with personal computers for Internet-related applications, key signing parties themselves generally don't involve computers, since that would give adversaries increased opportunities for subterfuge. Rather, participants write down a string of letters and numbers, called a fingerprint, which represents their key. The fingerprint is created by a cryptographic hash function, which condenses the public key down to a unique string, which is shorter and more manageable. Participants exchange these fingerprints as they verify each others' identification. Then, after the party, they obtain the public keys corresponding to the fingerprints they received and digitally sign them. Public domain, taken by me. ... Public domain, taken by me. ... The German Lorenz cipher machine, used in World War II for encryption of very high-level general staff messages Cryptography (or cryptology; derived from Greek κρυπτός kryptós hidden, and γράφειν gráfein to write) is the study of message secrecy. ... PGP is a computer program which provides cryptographic privacy and authentication. ... A key is a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm. ... Digital signature is a term with confusing reference. ... In cryptography, a public key certificate (or identity certificate) is a certificate which uses a digital signature to bind together a public key with an identity — information such as a the name of a person or an organisation, their address, and so forth. ... Public key cryptography is a form of cryptography which generally allows users to communicate securely without having prior access to a shared secret key, by using a pair of cryptographic keys, designated as public key and private key, which are related mathematically. ... In cryptography, a web of trust is a concept used in PGP, GnuPG, and other OpenPGP-compatible systems to establish the authenticity of the binding between a public key and a user. ... In cryptography, a cryptographic hash function is a hash function with certain additional security properties to make it suitable for use as a primitive in various information security applications, such as authentication and message integrity. ...

See also

• Zimmermann-Sassaman key-signing protocol

In cryptography, the Zimmermann-Sassaman key-signing protocol is a protocol to speed up the key fingerprint verification part of a key signing party rapidly. ...

External links

• Keysigning Party Howto
• Biglumber - Keysigning coordination website