Which keyserver

[Mark]

Phil,

Thanks for the explanation on what was happening. I thought something
was just not right as when I hit search it would come back in less than
a second with 0 results. It seemed to me that it didn't actually even
search through the database. Anyway now that you say there is not really
a server anymore to search it makes sense. 

I'm not familiar with the attack on it and by who so will have to google
it and see if I can learn more.

On 9/18/2020 8:32 AM, Phil Pennock wrote:
> On 2020-09-18 at 08:06 -0700, Mark wrote:
>> I use GPG4Win and I've noticed that "hkp://keys.gnupg.net" is not
>> working right. I was not getting any hits back when searching with
>> Kleopatra and then I tried to ping that server which returned host not
>> found.  So I'm also interested if there is a better choice.
> keys.gnupg.net is a CNAME for hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net -- which is
> now returning zero results.
>
> The pool of  is Very Unhealthy.  The entire keyserver
> system had Known Issues but worked well enough that the volunteers who
> ran it could keep it alive and improving, until it came under sustained
> attack from people trying to burn it all down and push people to use
> "not OpenPGP" instead (some of the funding for attack tool development
> came from an org which is firmly pushing one of the modern alternative
> encrypted communications tools).
>
> There's still some keyservers, but what you see now are the red smoking
> embers of what's left after everything else has been burnt down.  From a
> pool of around 120 servers, almost all routinely working fairly well and
> being able to maintain per-continent pool aliases of servers which were
> health-checked and removed if not doing well, there's now fewer than 20
> servers left, from very few independent sources, and even those in the
> main pool are often not doing well.
>
> Which is why folks are struggling and trying to find something which
> works well enough.  There's nothing which fits all needs, but various
> solutions for some scenarios.  See my first reply in this thread with
> suggestions of particular servers.
>
> -Phil