When sending sensitive information to US-CERT via email, we encourage you to encrypt your messages. US-CERT uses multiple public keys based upon their purpose. If the purpose of your communication is a cyber security incident report, vulnerability report, or any other technical question related to cyber security, please use the following key:

User ID: US-CERT Security Operations Center <soc@us-cert.gov>
Key ID: B832BE70
Key Type: RSA
Expires: 2009-10-01
Key size: 2048
Fingerprint: 195E 7A9E CCD9 9504 3CA7 E26E 13D4 4840 B832 BE70

Information about other keys can be found on Contacting US-CERT.

US-CERT signs the email distribution of all US-CERT publications, including Cyber Security Alerts, Technical Cyber Security Alerts, Cyber Security Bulletins and Cyber Security Tips with the following key:

User ID: US-CERT Publications Key <us-cert@us-cert.gov>
Key ID: 0x3E1F88AB
Key Type: RSA
Expires: 2009-10-01
Key Size: 2048
Fingerprint: E0BF 6D0E 88C1 1FFC F93F 571B 7207 9633 3E1F 88AB

As a good security practice, users should be sure to validate public keys they receive and not trust unvalidated keys. Forged or expired keys may be found on public key servers. It is important to validate your copy of the US-CERT public keys to insure they are legitimate. You can verify the fingerprints of the keys shown above by contacting the US-CERT hotline at: +1 888-282-0870.

Note: You can also verify the US-CERT Master Key-signing key signature on the keys listed above. We have generated an US-CERT master key that we use only as a key-signing key. Use this master key only for verifying other US-CERT keys:

Key ID: 0x8AAA37C8
Key Type: RSA
Expires: 2013-10-01
Key Size: 4096 Fingerprint: 374B 1394 5ACE 593D 6055 CD58 45A3 4E57 8AAA 37C8
User ID: US-CERT Master Key-signing Key (signing only)