At the request of Dominic Steinitz, I'll outline the threats that I think this proposal protects against. The signing of packages prevents a number of attacks between the packager and the server: 1) Accidentally or purposely hijacking a package that is signed by (belongs to) someone else. 2) Uploading a malicious package to replace someone else's good package. 3) Man-in-the-middle attcks between the packager and Hackage. Checking signatures on the client side prevents: 1) Man-in-the-middle attcks between hackage and the client 2) Automatic installation of anonymous malicious packages Building a trusted network of keys prevents: 1) Someone creating a key pretending to be someone else 2) Unchecked anonymous uploads (running arbitrary code from an unknown source) One question that comes up is: how does the so-called "web of trust" help out with this situation? The signing of keys ties the identity of an individual (via their state-issued identification) to a particular key. Now if someone attempts one of the above attacks, after being "trusted" we know who they are in real life. So it's not really a "web of trust" but more like a "web of identity". We will need to put procedures in place for handling a variety of situations, like loss of trust, etc. This proposal doesn't cover all of that, but it puts a bit of structure into place to raise the bar for an attacker sufficiently high in my opinion, and gives the end-users the tools they need to be as paranoid as they care to be. peace, isaac