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: 0xCFA936E8
Key Type: RSA
Expires: 2012-09-30
Key size: 2048
Fingerprint: A8D9 49CB 051B C6F6 9169 E220 4DAD A5AF CFA9 36E8

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: 0x5713B18C
Key Type: RSA
Expires: 2012-09-30
Key Size: 2048
Fingerprint: 7BA7 E107 21FE 9749 B8E1 BF4E 3FC6 9065 5713 B18C

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)