[cjbprime]

For people who don't know hpa, the owner of the factored key: he's a core Linux kernel maintainer and has been the kernel.org sysadmin in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Peter_Anvin

If it's true that the normal key generation process would reject creating a key with factors this small, this is especially concerning.

Edit: Fortunately it looks like this is garbage on the keyservers, rather than a real problem with hpa's key.

[asciilifeform]

I, for one, would still like to learn who and why placed the garbage on the SKS servers. (And no, I cannot prove to the satisfaction of everyone that I had not somehow done it myself. Though if anyone can picture what such proof would look like, I'd be happy to try.)

And why Mr. Anvin's key was chosen, rather than another.

[cjbprime]

I don't find that especially interesting.

If the design of the keyservers is such that they'll accept untrusted info and will relay it expecting clients to verify it, we shouldn't be surprised when we find bogus data on the keyservers.

We should be surprised if the clients do something other than reject the bogus data, but so far we're seeing them do the right thing.