Ubuntu Manpage: sq pki authenticate - Authenticate a binding

NAME

       sq pki authenticate - Authenticate a binding

SYNOPSIS

       sq pki authenticate [OPTIONS] FINGERPRINT|KEYID USERID

DESCRIPTION

       Authenticate a binding.

       Authenticate  a  binding  (a  certificate  and User ID) by looking for a path from the trust roots to the
       specified  binding  in  the  Web  of  Trust.   Because  certifications  may  express  uncertainty  (i.e.,
       certifications may be marked as conveying only partial or marginal trust), multiple paths may be needed.

       If  a  binding  could  be  authenticated to the specified level (by default: fully authenticated, i.e., a
       trust amount of 120), then the exit status is 0.  Otherwise the exit status is 1.

       If any valid paths to the binding are found, they are printed on stdout whether they  are  sufficient  to
       authenticate the binding or not.

OPTIONS

Subcommand options
-a, --amount=AMOUNT
The required amount of trust.

120 indicates full authentication; values less than 120 indicate partial authentication. When
`--certification-network` is passed, this defaults to 1200, i.e., `sq pki` tries to find 10 paths.

--certification-network
Treats the network as a certification network.

Normally, `sq pki` treats the Web of Trust network as an authentication network where a
certification only means that the binding is correct, not that the target should be treated as a
trusted introducer. In a certification network, the targets of certifications are treated as
trusted introducers with infinite depth, and any regular expressions are ignored. Note: The trust
amount remains unchanged. This is how most so-called PGP path-finding algorithms work.

--email
Changes the USERID parameter to match User IDs with the specified email address.

Interprets the USERID parameter as an email address, which is then used to select User IDs with
that email address.

Unlike when comparing User IDs, email addresses are first normalized by the domain to ASCII using
IDNA2008 Punycode conversion, and then converting the resulting email address to lowercase using
the empty locale.

If multiple User IDs match, they are each considered in turn, and this function returns success if
at least one of those User IDs can be authenticated. Note: The paths to the different User IDs
are not combined.

--gossip
Treats all certificates as unreliable trust roots.

This option is useful for figuring out what others think about a certificate (i.e., gossip or
hearsay). In other words, this finds arbitrary paths to a particular certificate.

Gossip is useful in helping to identify alternative ways to authenticate a certificate. For
instance, imagine Ed wants to authenticate Laura's certificate, but asking her directly is
inconvenient. Ed discovers that Micah has certified Laura's certificate, but Ed hasn't yet
authenticated Micah's certificate. If Ed is willing to rely on Micah as a trusted introducer, and
authenticating Micah's certificate is easier than authenticating Laura's certificate, then Ed has
learned about an easier way to authenticate Laura's certificate.

FINGERPRINT|KEYID
The fingerprint or Key ID of the certificate to authenticate

USERID
The User ID to authenticate.

This is case sensitive, and must be the whole User ID, not just a substring or an email address.

Global options
See sq(1) for a description of the global options.

EXAMPLES

       Authenticate a specific binding.

              sq pki authenticate EB28F26E2739A4870ECC47726F0073F60FD0CBF0 \
                     "Alice <alice@example.org>"

       Check whether we can authenticate any user ID with the specified email address for the given certificate.

              sq pki authenticate EB28F26E2739A4870ECC47726F0073F60FD0CBF0 \
                     --email alice@example.org

VERSION