Ask HN: How can I trust a site's .asc key to not be compromised?

2 pointshellbanner3 comments

Many websites and authors put their public key on their site.

But how can I trust that the .ASC file is not compromised by say, one of the certificate companies?

Well basically, you can't as long as you're loading the web page over an insecure connection. If the .asc is loaded over SSL, then verifying the certificate should be sufficient.

Even then, you should also verify it out-of-band (e.g. compare full fingerprints over OTR with someone you trust who has previously saved the same .asc file)

Agreed, depending on how paranoid you are. The server serving the .asc file over SSL could still be compromised (among other things). Similarly you are unable ascertain that recipient's private key isn't compromised either, or recipient is forced to decrypt, et cetera.

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