Key servers are repositories of keys in public key systems, they are necessary infrastructure for the widespread and easy use of systems such as PGP and GnuPG. Normally KeyServers are publically accessible, allowing for querying, retrieval and long-term archiving of public keys.

Keyservers for OpenPGP

(OpenPGP is the standard that GPG and PGP adhere to).

If you're new to GPG, and wondering what you're supposed to do with your newly created key, here are some key servers you can upload and receive keys to/from.

Use a command like

gpg --keyserver <some.key.server> ...

Or even better, add a line to your $HOME/.gnupg/options file like

keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net

(In recent versions of GPG -- such as 1.2.1 or later -- the options file has been renamed to gpg.conf)

There are many lists of publically accessible key servers, but many of the are very out-of-date. At the time of writing http://keyserver.kjsl.com/jharris/keyserver.html was a good, current list.

"main" key server network

These servers synchronise with each other

• everything at http://www.au.pgp.net/pgpnet/ftp-key.html
• http://wwwkeys.pgp.net (this uses round-robin DNS)
• http://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net (a subset of the above)
• the.earth.li (aka wwwkeys.uk.pgp.net)
• http://www.pgpkeys.net (I think this is part of the above network...?)
• Currently random.sks.keyserver.penguin.de seems to be the best address to use. This is a set of SKS (RFC:2440, RFC:2440bis and http://www.nongnu.org/sks/) compatible keyservers advertised using RoundRobinDNS?. They are well synchronised and support advanced features such as photo uids.

"Other" key servers

These servers (apparently?) don't synchronise with the above.

• www.mandrakesecure.net
• keyserver.net

Part of CategoryCryptography