Find a key
Name, e-mail or key-id (0x...):
Name, e-mail or key-id (0x...):
Paste your new or updated and ASCII-armored public key into the text area to upload it to the server.
Give me server stats! ...with cross-peering information.
Give me key analysis! (with thanks to Jason Harris)
This is the web interface to the sks.pkqs.net OpenPGP keyserver.
OpenPGP [RFC 4880] is a standardized format for cryptographic data, notably keys, signatures, and encrypted messages. The Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) tool, OpenPGP evolved of, has originally been written by Philip Zimmermann for asymmetric (public-key) e-mail encryption. Nowadays, a well-known OpenPGP implementation, besides today's PGP software, is GnuPG, which is licensed under the GNU GPL.
In asymmetric cryptography a public key is used for encryption and a secret (or private) key for decryption. Because we don't want to attach our public key in each mail, keyservers have been invented. The first PKS (PGP Public Key Server; now OpenPGP Public Key Server) has been written by Marc Horowitz at MIT. The protocol is therefore named Horowitz Key Protocol, short HKP. Well, a single keyserver is a single point of failure, but many keyservers need to synchronize their data. The SKS (Synchronizing Key Server), written by Yaron Minsky, provides a scaling sync algorithm, while – unlike PKS – being capable of more recent OpenPGP features.
So this server is running sks 1.0.10 (since 2007-04-13) and you may
upload, extract, refresh and search for keys. To use it with GnuPG on a UNIX-like
platform, write
keyserver x-hkp://sks.pkqs.net
into ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf. This server runs on port 11371,
by the way. This web interface also provides a limited access to the
SKS, but I strongly recommend using a more sophisticated tool.
If you like to switch to another keyserver, you may have a look at the
SKS keyserver list or simply use
x-hkp://subkeys.pgp.net.