# GPG Signature support removed from PyPI **URL:** \ **Category:** Packaging\ **Created:** [May 23, 2023, 2:31pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014 "2023-05-23T14:31:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dstufft](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/dstufft/32/23_2.png) [@dstufft](https://discuss.python.org/u/dstufft)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2023, 2:31pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/1 "2023-05-23T14:31:52Z")
You can read more about it [here](https://blog.pypi.org/posts/2023-05-23-removing-pgp/), but tl;dr is that due to the fact the basically nobody used the GPG signature support _and_ of the people who did use it, nearly 2/3 of the uploaded signatures in the last year were made by keys that could not meaningfully be validated. ---
**Author:** ![fungi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/fungi/32/5963_2.png) [@fungi](https://discuss.python.org/u/fungi)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/2 "2023-05-23T14:50:37Z")
It’s worth pointing out that at least some of the lack of use was not necessarily due to a lack of desire for the feature, but rather repeated signals that it could (and likely would) go away at any time. Because the PyPI admins had been talking about removing it even during the Cheeseshop days, and the direction with Warehouse development indicated OpenPGP signature support would be omitted then as well (to make room for TUF), at least the OpenStack community made the decision to publish signatures for all their packages on a completely separate site rather than continue uploading them to PyPI. I would not be surprised if other large communities came to similar conclusions and solutions for attestation of their packages as well. ---
**Author:** ![dstufft](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/dstufft/32/23_2.png) [@dstufft](https://discuss.python.org/u/dstufft)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2023, 3:27pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/3 "2023-05-23T15:27:38Z")
Sure! Though my numbers in 2016 were only a little bit better, 4% of uploads had signatures (I did not do any checking how many of them were valid), compared to 0.3% now. Further, I do not believe that anyone who has seriously worked on PyPI security in the past 10? 15? years considered GPG to be part of the solution, rather than being a weird vestigial thing that just happened to still exist. ---
**Author:** ![fungi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/fungi/32/5963_2.png) [@fungi](https://discuss.python.org/u/fungi)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2023, 4:49pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/4 "2023-05-23T16:49:54Z")
A definite up-side here is that I finally get to stop explaining to users why we aren’t publishing our OpenPGP signatures to PyPI. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Erotemic](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/erotemic/32/8025_2.png) [@Erotemic](https://discuss.python.org/u/Erotemic)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 12:09am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/5 "2023-06-01T00:09:02Z")
I’m sad to see this decision. Software signatures are not the entire solution, but if you do have a means of verying the owner of a key, you could verify the software you’ve downloaded is from a trusted source. The number of people uploading packages with signatures is irrelevant. What matters is that some people have a subset of packages with signatures that they trust. This vastly limits the pool of packages, but that’s the point. If you put in the work to validate the signers (and that need not be through public keyservers) it’s unfortunate you can no longer check the package signatures. Perhaps GPG isn’t the greatest tool, but some package signing method should be supported before removing this one. The problem is that most people aren’t using GPG correctly, but the solution here is that nobody gets to use it. I think this is a mistake. ---
**Author:** ![FFY00](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/ffy00/32/4007_2.png) [@FFY00](https://discuss.python.org/u/FFY00)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 12:21am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/6 "2023-06-01T00:21:31Z")
FWIW I upload signatures for all my projects, including pypa/build. ---
**Author:** ![fungi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/fungi/32/5963_2.png) [@fungi](https://discuss.python.org/u/fungi)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 12:53pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/7 "2023-06-01T12:53:59Z")
As previously mentioned, you can certainly publish detached OpenPGP signatures of all your sdists/wheels to a separate site. If users already need to do out-of-band work to determine that they trust your signing keys then also going somewhere else to download the signatures (from your project site for example) isn’t a huge stretch. This was the compromise we arrived at long ago for the OpenStack community’s many projects. Downstream redistributors (like those doing packaging work in GNU/Linux distributions) know where to find the signatures from our release automation in order to make sure that what they retrieved from PyPI hasn’t been tampered with at/after publication. ---
**Author:** ![FFY00](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/ffy00/32/4007_2.png) [@FFY00](https://discuss.python.org/u/FFY00)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 5:39pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/8 "2023-06-01T17:39:22Z")
Yes, I agree that this isn’t a huge deal since you can publish the signatures externally, it’s just a bit annoying. That said, I also publish signed git tags for all releases of my projects, and putting my downstream packager hat on, that is usually preferred over PyPI artifacts anyway. ---
**Author:** ![lilydjwg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/lilydjwg/32/12977_2.png) [@lilydjwg](https://discuss.python.org/u/lilydjwg)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2023, 11:27am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/gpg-signature-support-removed-from-pypi/27014/9 "2023-06-17T11:27:40Z")
I feel sad about this too. While _I_ can publish signatures elsewhere (I’m signing git tags anyway), it’s a problem to verify the publisher of PyPI packages, and PGP signatures _could_ be one method. PGP signatures are the only well-supported way to verify publisher without trusting a third party (at least, not around the time of verification).