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](/faq/#should-i-trust-this-website)), dishonest IT staff at the hosting company, dishonest staff at the ISPs, Wi-Fi attacks, etc.
We call this philosophy [Distrusting the Infrastructure](/faq/#what-does-it-mean-to-distrust-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](#how-to-verify-qubes-repos), not just verifying ISOs.)
**Linux:** `gpg2` from your package manager or from [gnupg.org](https://gnupg.org/download/index.html) ([documentation](https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/)).
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.
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.
- If you have access to an existing Qubes installation, it's available in every VM ([except dom0](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2544)):
- Get it from a public [keyserver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_server_%28cryptographic%29#Keyserver_examples) (specified on first use with `--keyserver <URI>` along with keyserver options to include key signatures), e.g.:
The Qubes Master Signing Key is also available in the [Qubes Security Pack](/security/pack/) and in the archives of the project's [developer](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-devel/RqR9WPxICwg/kaQwknZPDHkJ) and [user](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-users/CLnB5uFu_YQ/ZjObBpz0S9UJ) [mailing lists](/support/).
Another option is to rely on the key's fingerprint.
Every PGP key has a fingerprint that uniquely identifies it among all PGP keys (viewable with `gpg2 --fingerprint <KEY_ID>`).
Therefore, if you know the genuine Qubes Master Signing Key fingerprint, then you always have an easy way to confirm whether any purported copy of it is authentic, simply by comparing the fingerprints.
For example, here is the Qubes Master Signing Key fingerprint:
(e.g., [slides from a talk](https://hyperelliptic.org/PSC/slides/psc2015_qubesos.pdf), on a [T-shirt](https://twitter.com/legind/status/813847907858337793/photo/2), or in the [recording of a presentation](https://youtu.be/S0TVw7U3MkE?t=2563)).
Once you've obtained the fingerprint from enough independent sources in enough different ways that you feel confident that you know the genuine fingerprint, keep it in a safe place.
Every time you need to check whether a key claiming to be the Qubes Master Signing Key is authentic, compare that key's fingerprint to your trusted copy and confirm they match.
Now that you've imported the authentic 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.
The filename of the Release Signing Key for your version is usually `qubes-release-X-signing-key.asc`, where `X` is the major version number of your Qubes release.
You can find the Release Signing Key for your Qubes version on the [Downloads](/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](/security/pack/) and the [Qubes OS Keyserver](https://keys.qubes-os.org/keys/).
What matters is the line that shows that this key is signed by the Qubes Master Signing Key with a `sig!` prefix.
This verifies the authenticity of the Release Signing Key.
Note that the `!` flag after the `sig` tag is important because it means that the key signature is valid.
A `sig-` prefix would indicate a bad signature and `sig%` would mean that gpg encountered an error while verifying the signature.
It is not necessary to independently verify the authenticity of the Release Signing Key, since you already verified the authenticity of the Qubes Master Signing Key.
Before proceeding to the next step, make sure the Release Signing Key is in your keyring:
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](/downloads/) page, and you can always find all the digest files for every Qubes ISO in the [Qubes Security Pack](/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 malicious ISO, and replaced the values in `Qubes-RX-x86_64.iso.DIGESTS` with his own set of values.
Therefore, we should also verify the authenticity of the listed hash values.
If our copy of the `Qubes OS Release X Signing Key` is being validated by the authentic Qubes Master Signing Key (see [above](#1-get-the-qubes-master-signing-key-and-verify-its-authenticity)), we can be confident that these hash values came from the Qubes devs.
Whenever you use one of the [Qubes repositories](https://github.com/QubesOS), 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](/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.
Please install it using the method appropriate for your environment (e.g., via your package manager).
### Why am I getting "No such file or directory"?
Your working directory does not contain the required files.
Go back and follow the instructions more carefully, making sure that you put all required files in the same directory *and* navigate to that directory.
Either you don't have the [Qubes Master Signing Key](#1-get-the-qubes-master-signing-key-and-verify-its-authenticity), or you didn't [set its trust level correctly](#1-get-the-qubes-master-signing-key-and-verify-its-authenticity).
For present purposes, you don't need them as long as you have the [Qubes Master Signing Key](#1-get-the-qubes-master-signing-key-and-verify-its-authenticity) and the [Release Signing Key](#2-get-the-release-signing-key) for your Qubes version.
In particular, make sure you have the [Qubes Master Signing Key](#1-get-the-qubes-master-signing-key-and-verify-its-authenticity), the [Release Signing Key](#2-get-the-release-signing-key), *and* the [signature file](#3-verify-your-qubes-iso) and/or [digest file](#how-to-verify-qubes-iso-digests) all for the *correct* Qubes OS version.
If your question is about GPG, please see the [GPG documentation](https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/).
