E.2.4 The Master Keys
The Master Key signs almost nothing. Its purpose is to bind the other keys together and certify that they are all owned by the same people and part of the same integrated setup. The only signatures produced by the Master Key, ever, should be the signatures on the other keys.
The Master Key is especially long, and its private key and passphrase are stored with special care.
We have collected some third-party signatures on the Master Key, in order to increase the chances that you can find a suitable trust path to them.
We have uploaded our various keys to public keyservers, so that even if you don't know any of the people who have signed our keys, you can still be reasonably confident that an attacker would find it hard to substitute fake keys on all the public keyservers at once.
E.3 Key rollover
Our current keys were generated in September 2015, except for the Secure Contact Key which was generated in February 2016 (we didn't think of it until later).
Prior to that, we had a much older set of keys generated in 2000. For each of the key types above (other than the Secure Contact Key), we provided both an RSA key and a DSA key (because at the time we generated them, RSA was not in practice available to everyone, due to export restrictions).
The new Master Key is signed with both of the old ones, to show that it really is owned by the same people and not substituted by an attacker. Also, we have retrospectively signed the old Release Keys with the new Master Key, in case you're trying to verify the signatures on a release prior to the rollover and can find a chain of trust to those keys from any of the people who have signed our new Master Key.
Future releases will be signed with the up-to-date keys shown above. Releases prior to the rollover are signed with the old Release Keys.
For completeness, those old keys are given here:
Master Key (original RSA)
RSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024R/1E34AC41 (long version: 1024R/9D5877BF1E34AC41). Fingerprint: 8F 15 97 DA 25 30 AB 0D 88 D1 92 54 11 CF 0C 4C
Master Key (original DSA)
DSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024D/6A93B34E (long version: 1024D/4F5E6DF56A93B34E). Fingerprint: 313C 3E76 4B74 C2C5 F2AE 83A8 4F5E 6DF5 6A93 B34E
Release Key (original RSA)
RSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024R/B41CAE29 (long version: 1024R/EF39CCC0B41CAE29). Fingerprint: AE 65 D3 F7 85 D3 18 E0 3B 0C 9B 02 FF 3A 81 FE
Release Key (original DSA)
DSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024D/08B0A90B (long version: 1024D/FECD6F3F08B0A90B). Fingerprint: 00B1 1009 38E6 9800 6518 F0AB FECD 6F3F 08B0 A90B
Snapshot Key (original RSA)
RSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024R/32B903A9 (long version: 1024R/FAAED21532B903A9). Fingerprint: 86 8B 1F 79 9C F4 7F BD 8B 1B D7 8E C6 4E 4C 03
Snapshot Key (original DSA)
DSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024D/7D3E4A00 (long version: 1024D/165E56F77D3E4A00). Fingerprint: 63DD 8EF8 32F5 D777 9FF0 2947 165E 56F7 7D3E 4A00
Appendix F: SSH-2 names specified for PuTTY
There are various parts of the SSH-2 protocol where things are specified using a textual name. Names ending in @putty.projects.tartarus.org are reserved for allocation by the PuTTY team. Allocated names are documented here.
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F.1 Connection protocol channel request names
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F.2 Key exchange method names