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by jarrett 4521 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.
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.