[ig1]

The one obvious flaw is the "email us for our PGP key" - distributing the public key in private and over an insecure channel makes it vulnerable to replacement.

Has anyone written a "best practices" guide for designing a security page ?

[tlrobinson]

Why don't they just publish the key on the site?

[tptacek]

They should.

[eyeareque]

They should post it, and preferably on an https site.

[danielsiders]

Probably because security@ emails are routed through their normal helpdesk system which doesn't handle PGP properly.

[akerl_]

I doubt that their security emails do that, but even if they do, changing how you get the key wouldn't fix a PGP compatibility issue, since once you have the key you'd still be emailing them using it.

[jarrett]

In theory, PGP public keys shouldn't depend on being sent over a more-secure medium like SSL, because they're signed. One of the main points of PGP's design is that you can't spoof a public key, because you can't spoof its signatures.

That being said, in practice, I don't know that everyone is diligent about checking signatures of public keys they receive. An attacker could create a spoofed key, sign it with several other identities controlled by the attacker, and hope those signatures are enough to fool the unweary.

[giovannibajo1]

The point is that you need an entry point of trust. So either you have been in many different signing parties and you happen to have a reasonable connection with the key, or they must give you a trust reference on the website, preferably through HTTPS. At which point, they can just publish the key on the website.

[jarrett]

Yes, that would definitely be a viable strategy. It's probably the easiest one, and it's what I would do. In general, using HTTPS for anything related to your bug bounty program is probably good hygiene.

Though even without that, I don't think you need to have been to a lot of key signing parties. The entry point of trust could very well be another organization--not GitHub, not someone at a key signing party. As long as the signature chain points back to an identity you can trust, you're good to go.