Can You Trust Web of Trust?
- Every data security system, regardless of aims or technology, is vulnerable to compromise, the same goes for the Web of Trust.
- It is not a perfect system that provides total security. Instead, it will facilitate trust-based connections between you and people who share your interests and understandings. This system has the potential to be effective if all players act ethically.
- It is susceptible to human manipulation and inaccuracy. Take caution not to reveal your secret key. Also, be aware of viruses, public key manipulation, security flaws on your device, things you erased but still have on your hard drive, and even cryptanalysis, the opposite of cryptography.
What is Web of Trust?
Web of Trust in cryptography is a concept used in PGP, GnuPG, and other OpenPGP-compatible systems to verify the legitimacy of a public key and its owner. Its decentralized trust model is an alternative to the centralized trust model of a public key infrastructure (PKI), which is entirely dependent on a certificate authority (or a hierarchy of them). As with computer networks, there are several separate webs of trust, and any user (via their public key certificate) can participate in and connect multiple webs.