The certificate issued by the Stanford OpenEdX Team is signed by a gpg key so that it can be validated independently by anyone who has the OpenEdX public key. For independent verification OpenEdX uses what is called a "detached signature" meaning that the signature for the certificate is contained in a separate file with a ".sig" extension.
To complete the verification procedure you will need the following three files:
- The official Stanford OpenEdX Team public key.
- The OpenEdX certificate belonging to Vadim Platonov (you should already have this file).
- The signature file for Vadim Platonov's certificate
Ensure you have the pdf, the ".sig" signature file and the OpenEdX public key copied to a single directory before you begin.
Import the OpenEdX public key on OSX using GPG Keychain
Download and install gpgtools.
After installation, GPG Keychain Access will prompt for a new personal keypair.
Click the import icon to import the public key file OpenEdX, openedx.pub.
CTRL-click the OpenEdX public key and select "sign" to validate it.
Confirm that the OpenEdX public key is listed in the GPG Keychain Access window and it has Short ID 3E862F0D.
Import the OpenEdX public key on Microsoft Windows using gpg4win
Download and install the full version of gpg4win.
After the installation is complete, launch Kleapatra from the start menu.
Create a new personal certificate if don't have one listed under "My Certificates".
Import the OpenEdX public key file, openedx.pub for OpenEdX by clicking on the "Import Certificate" icon.
Certify the OpenEdX public key by highlighting the OpenEdX certificate and selecting "Certify Certificate" under the "Certificates" menu.
Make sure that the OpenEdX public key/certificate is listed under the "Trusted Certificates" tab and verify it has the Key-ID 3E862F0D.
When prompted, select "Create personal OpenPGP key pair."
Verify the OpenEdX certificate using gpg on both OSX and Windows
- Open up a new terminal on OSX or a command window on Windows
- Go into the directory where the .sig and .pdf files are located
- Run the following command to verify the fingerprint of the OpenEdX key
gpg --verify Certificate.pdf.sig Certificate.pdf