Automated signature checking - Using the GNU Privacy Guard
Description: Using the GNU Privacy Guard

Up: Unattended Usage

### 4.6 Automated signature checking

It is very important to understand the semantics used with signature verification. Checking a signature is not as simple as it may sound and so the operation is a bit complicated. In most cases it is required to look at several status lines. Here is a table of all cases a signed message may have:

The signature is valid
  This does mean that the signature has been successfully verified, the certificates are all sane. However there are two subcases with important information: One of the certificates may have expired or a signature of a message itself as expired. It is a sound practise to consider such a signature still as valid but additional information should be displayed. Depending on the subcase `gpgsm` will issue these status codes:
  signature valid and nothing did expire
    `GOODSIG`, `VALIDSIG`, `TRUST_FULLY`
  signature valid but at least one certificate has expired
    `EXPKEYSIG`, `VALIDSIG`, `TRUST_FULLY`
  signature valid but expired
    `EXPSIG`, `VALIDSIG`, `TRUST_FULLY` Note, that this case is currently not implemented.
The signature is invalid
  This means that the signature verification failed (this is an indication of af a transfer error, a program error or tampering with the message). `gpgsm` issues one of these status codes sequences:
  `BADSIG`
  `GOODSIG, VALIDSIG TRUST_NEVER`
Error verifying a signature
  For some reason the signature could not be verified, i.e. it can't be decided whether the signature is valid or invalid. A common reason for this is a missing certificate.