Therefore, most people should read this section, even if it looks trivial at first sight.
Digital signatures can prove both **authenticity** and **integrity** to a reasonable degree of certainty.
**Authenticity** ensures that a given file was indeed created by the person who signed it (i.e., that it was not forged by a third party).
**Integrity** ensures that the contents of the file have not been tampered with (i.e., that a third party has not undetectably altered its contents *en route*).
Digital signatures **cannot** prove any other property, e.g., that the signed file is not malicious.
In fact, there is nothing that could stop someone from signing a malicious program (and it happens from time to time in reality).
The point is that we must decide who we will trust (e.g., Linus Torvalds, Microsoft, or the Qubes Project) and assume that if a given file was signed by a trusted party, then it should not be malicious or negligently buggy.
The decision of whether to trust any given party is beyond the scope of digital signatures.
Once we make the decision to trust certain parties, digital signatures are useful, because they make it possible for us to limit our trust only to those few parties we choose and not to worry about all the bad things that can happen between us and them, e.g., server compromises (qubes-os.org will surely be compromised one day, so [don't blindly trust the live version of this site][website-trust]), dishonest IT staff at the hosting company, dishonest staff at the ISPs, Wi-Fi attacks, etc.
We call this philosophy [Distrusting the Infrastructure].
By verifying all the files we download that purport to be authored by a party we've chosen to trust, we eliminate concerns about the bad things discussed above, since we can easily detect whether any files have been tampered with (and subsequently choose to refrain from executing, installing, or opening them).
Anybody can generate a GPG key pair that purports to belong to "The Qubes Project," but of course only the key pair that we (i.e., the Qubes developers) generated is the legitimate one.
The next section explains how to verify the validity of the Qubes signing keys in the process of verifying a Qubes ISO.
(However, the same general principles apply to all cases in which you may wish to verify a PGP signature, such as [verifying repos], not just verifying ISOs.)
Every file published by the Qubes Project (ISO, RPM, TGZ files and Git repositories) is digitally signed by one of the developer keys or Release Signing Keys.
Each such key is signed by the [Qubes Master Signing Key] (`0xDDFA1A3E36879494`).
The developer signing keys are set to expire after one year, while the Qubes Master Signing Key and Release Signing Keys have no expiration date.
This Qubes Master Signing Key was generated on and is kept only on a dedicated, air-gapped "vault" machine, and the private portion will (hopefully) never leave this isolated machine.
The Qubes Master Signing Key is also available in the [Qubes Security Pack] and in the archives of the project's [developer][devel-master-key-msg] and [user][user-master-key-msg] [mailing lists].
Once you have obtained the Qubes Master Signing Key, you should verify the fingerprint of this key very carefully by obtaining copies of the fingerprint from multiple independent sources and comparing them to the downloaded key's fingerprint to ensure they match.
For additional security, we also publish the fingerprint of the Qubes Master Signing Key here (but [remember not to blindly trust the live version of this website][website-trust]):
Once you're confident that you have the legitimate Qubes Master Signing Key, set its trust level to "ultimate" so that it can be used to automatically verify all the keys signed by the Qubes Master Signing Key (in particular, Release Signing Keys).
Now, when you import any of the legitimate Qubes developer keys and Release Signing Keys used to sign ISOs, RPMs, TGZs, Git tags, and Git commits, they will already be trusted in virtue of being signed by the Qubes Master Signing Key.
### 2. Get the Release Signing Key
The filename of the Release Signing Key for your version is `qubes-release-X-signing-key.asc`, where `X` is the major version number of your Qubes release.
There are several ways to get the Release Signing Key for your Qubes release.
You can find the Release Signing Key for your Qubes version on the [Downloads] page.
You can also download all the currently used developers' signing keys, Release Signing Keys, and the Qubes Master Signing Key from the [Qubes Security Pack] and the [Qubes OS Keyserver].
Once you've downloaded your Release Signing Key, import it with GPG:
This is just an example, so the output you receive will not look exactly the same.
What matters is that the last line shows that this key is signed by the Qubes Master Signing Key, which verifies the authenticity of the Release Signing Key.
It is not necessary to independently verify the authenticity of the Release Signing Key.
Every Qubes ISO is released with a detached PGP signature file, which you can find on the [Downloads] page alongside the ISO.
If the filename of your ISO is `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso`, then the name of the signature file for that ISO is `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso.asc`, where `X` is a specific version of Qubes.
The signature filename is always the same as the ISO filename followed by `.asc`.
Each Qubes ISO is also accompanied by a plain text file ending in `.DIGESTS`.
This file contains the output of running several different cryptographic hash functions on the ISO in order to obtain alphanumeric outputs known as "digests" or "hash values."
These hash values are provided as an alternative verification method to PGP signatures (though the digest file is itself also PGP-signed --- see below).
You can find the `.DIGESTS` for your ISO on the [Downloads] page, and you can always find all the digest files for every Qubes ISO in the [Qubes Security Pack].
If the filename of your ISO is `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso`, then the name of the digest file for that ISO is `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso.DIGESTS`, where `X` is a specific version of Qubes.
The digest filename is always the same as the ISO filename followed by `.DIGESTS`.
Since the digest file is a plain text file, you can open it with any text editor.
Inside, you should find text that looks similar to this:
The `OK` response tells us that the hash value for that particular hash function matches.
The program also warns us that there are 23 improperly formatted lines, but this is to be expected.
This is because each file contains lines for several different hash values (as mentioned above), but each `*sum` program verifies only the line for its own hash function.
However, it is possible that an attacker replaced `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso` with a malicious ISO, computed the hash values for that ISO, and replaced the values in `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso.DIGESTS` with his own set of values.
If our copy of the `Qubes OS Release X Signing Key` is being validated by the authentic Qubes Master Signing Key (see [above][QMSK]), we can be confident that these hash values came from the Qubes devs.
Whenever you use one of the [Qubes repositories], you should verify the PGP signature in a tag on the latest commit or on the latest commit itself.
(One or both may be present, but only one is required.)
If there is no trusted signed tag or commit on top, any commits after the latest trusted signed tag or commit should **not** be trusted.
If you come across a repo with any unsigned commits, you should not add any of your own signed tags or commits on top of them unless you personally vouch for the trustworthiness of the unsigned commits.
Instead, ask the person who pushed the unsigned commits to sign them.
You should always perform this verification on a trusted local machine with properly validated keys (which are available in the [Qubes Security Pack]) rather than relying on a third party, such as GitHub.
While the GitHub interface may claim that a commit has a verified signature from a member of the Qubes team, this is only trustworthy if GitHub has performed the signature check correctly, the account identity is authentic, the user's key has not been replaced by an admin, GitHub's servers have not been compromised, and so on.
Since there's no way for you to be certain that all such conditions hold, you're much better off verifying signatures yourself.
### Why am I getting "WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature! There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner."?
Either you don't have the [Qubes Master Signing Key][QMSK], or you didn't [set its trust level correctly][QMSK].
### Why am I getting "X signature not checked due to a missing key"?
You don't have the keys that created those signatures in your keyring.
For present purposes, you don't need them as long as you have the [Qubes Master Signing Key][QMSK] and the [Release Signing Key][RSK] for your Qubes version.
### Why am I seeing additional signatures on a key with "[User ID not found]" or from a revoked key?
This is just a basic part of how OpenPGP works.
Anyone can sign anyone else's public key and upload the signed public key to keyservers.
Everyone is also free to revoke their own keys at any time (assuming they possess or can create a revocation certificate).
This has no impact on verifying Qubes ISOs, code, or keys.
### Why am I getting "verify signatures failed: unexpected data"?
You're not verifying against the correct [signature file].
### Why am I getting "not a detached signature"?
You're not verifying against the correct [signature file].
### Why am I getting "CRC error; [...] no signature found [...]"?
You're not verifying against the correct [signature file], or the signature file has been modified.
Try downloading it again or from a different source.
### Do I have to verify the ISO against both the [signature file] and the [digest file]?
No, either method is sufficient by itself.
### Why am I getting "no properly formatted X checksum lines found"?
You're not checking the correct [digest file].
### Why am I getting "WARNING: X lines are improperly formatted"?
Read [How to Verify Qubes ISO Digests][digest file] again.
### Why am I getting "WARNING: 1 listed file could not be read"?
The correct ISO is not in your working directory.
### I have another problem that isn't mentioned here.
Carefully read this page again to be certain that you didn't skip any steps.
In particular, make sure you have the [Qubes Master Signing Key][QMSK], the [Release Signing Key][RSK], *and* the [signature file] and/or [digest file] all for the *correct* Qubes OS version.
If your question is about GPG, please see the [GPG documentation].
If you still have a question, please address it to the [qubes-users mailing list].
