[Cryptography] [cryptography] JYA and Cryptome Keys Compromised

[Paul Wouters]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2015, John Young wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

by unknown key.

> I have learned today that all PGP public keys of John Young
> <jya at pipeline.com> and Cryptome <cryptome at earthlink.net> have been
> compromised.
> The keys have been revoked today.

Revocation could have been done by the person who stole the keys too.
That in itself is not good enough.

> Two new keys have been generated today:
>
> John Young 15-0915 <jya at pipeline.com> 0xD87D436C
> Cryptome 15-0915 <cryptome at earthlink.net> 0x8CD47BD5

Which I cannot find on either pgp.mit.edu or pgp.surfnet.nl. I did find
them on keyserver.pgp.com, but I don't know who runs it and with the
additional captcha software, no idea if that is compromised :P

It is announced using short keyids, not to be trusted, and no finger
prints although we can get those from the key used to sign this message
I guess.

$ gpg --list-sigs D87D436C
pub   4096R/D87D436C 2015-09-15
uid                  John Young 15-0915 <jya at pipeline.com>
sig      N   D87D436C 2015-09-15  John Young 15-0915 <jya at pipeline.com>
sig          CA57AD7C 2015-09-15  [User ID not found]
sub   4096R/79F82F3B 2015-09-15
sig          D87D436C 2015-09-15  John Young 15-0915 <jya at pipeline.com>

$ gpg --list-sigs 8CD47BD5
pub   4096R/8CD47BD5 2015-09-15
uid                  Cryptome 15-0915 <cryptome at earthlink.net>
sig      N   8CD47BD5 2015-09-15  Cryptome 15-0915 <cryptome at earthlink.net>
sig          CA57AD7C 2015-09-15  [User ID not found]
sub   4096R/27BCF5FB 2015-09-15
sig          8CD47BD5 2015-09-15  Cryptome 15-0915 <cryptome at earthlink.net>

The keys are both announced but not signed by each other?

I fetched CA57AD7C which has 6863 signatures on it. It seems to be some
PGP global directory key, signed by a few people I know, but still seems
to be only proof that it came from the keyserver, not that the key
actually belongs to you.

> This message is signed by the first.

But is that first key signed by the old keys? (which of course could
also have been done by the attacker, so you need to re-start a web
of trust with some of your personal confidants.

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

from an unknown key - with no direct signatures of any known trustable
key run by a human.

Paul