Gunnar Wolf

Web of Trust keysigning as Debian's means of authentication

Debian is a globally distributed project. And, although we are 100% volunteer based, we have a huge responsability in our hands: Each Debian Developer and Maintainer have the equivalent of root privileges in millions of computers throughout the world! One of the main assurances we have, both for ourselves and for the end users, is the strong, decentralized identity validation that the OpenPGP Web of Trust provides. This allows us to validate and trust developer identity throughout the world, with no central certification authority. It brings some challenges, such as how to bootstrap trust to people in areas far from other connected participants. In this talk, I will explain the basics of OpenPGP and the web-of-trust, and explain how (and whether!) MiniDebConf participants should join it.