Re: shutdown of pgpkeys.co.uk and pgpkeys.uk

[Andrew Gallagher]

On 23/06/2021 10:36, Gabor Kiss wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021, Andrew Gallagher wrote:
>
> Actually sks-keyservers.net (or its successor) is just a web page that
> shows statistics about key servers. That should not public at all
> so it would not attract any GDPR complaints.

In the context of this thread, we were clearly talking about the hkp(s) 
interface to the pool, not the statistics page.

> The GDPR problem is with SKS itself. That is a nightmare in this era.

It's a problem at multiple levels, because even with GDPR-compliant 
software, a pool is problematic - because the pool's manager has little 
control over individual operators or their data retention policies, so 
is unable to guarantee deletion of personal data.

> Even more I think it should keep the strong set only.

This would be a gatekeeping exercise, and hostile to new users. For 
example, I've been using PGP for over twenty years but it was only six 
or seven years ago that I got my key into the strong set.

There are several actions that other keystore codebases have taken to 
limit abuse, and which synchronising keyservers (i.e. Hockeypuck) should 
now consider:

1. Whitelisting packet types (Hagrid). There is no justification for 
keyservers to store UAT packets. Public keyservers should only store 
private key material, plaintext UIDs, sigs and attestations (see below). 
Fixing this will remove at a stroke the most terrifying abuse scenarios. 
(There are concerns with plaintext UIDs also, but these are less urgent)

2. Email verification (Hagrid, WKS). How to make this compatible with 
synchronisation is an open question. Keyserver operators could sign 
verified UIDs, but this would require all operators to explicitly trust 
each other.

3. Signature attestation (Hagrid TBC?). This requires an update to the 
OpenPGP standard, and quite a bit of client-side UX work, but is the 
definitive way to tackle third-party-sig spam. See Wiktor's earlier email.

There are also issues of managing dataset divergence, which will most 
likely require a refactoring of the storage back end and a new sync 
protocol, but this is a longer-term concern. For now we can use flag 
days and accept loss of backwards compatibility.

--
Andrew Gallagher

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