OpenPubkey vs Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer

OpenPubkey binds a user or workload identity established through OpenID Connect to a public key, so the identity can sign messages or artifacts. A PK Token represents control of an OIDC identity and its related private key at a particular time, provided the verifier trusts the identity provider. The project lists Google, Azure/Microsoft, Okta, OneLogin and Keycloak as compatible without changes to those providers; however, its client and verifier currently create and verify tokens from Google for users and GitHub for workloads. Current workload identity use requires GQ signatures. For user identity, they are unnecessary when the PK Token is not public. GQ signatures allow the identity provider’s signature to be stripped from an ID Token while preserving proof of that signature, preventing use against OIDC resource providers. OpenPubkey says it needs no additional certificate authority because the OpenID Provider fulfills that role. Public PK Tokens can reveal claims from an OIDC ID Token, potentially including a name or email address. The project is free under the Apache 2.0 license and is a Linux Foundation project; its repository says it is being prepared for version 1.0. The project directs technical questions to GitHub issues and offers a community Slack channel.

Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer (RHTAS) helps organizations sign and verify software artifacts, including container images, binaries, documents, source-code commits, software bills of materials, build artifacts, and AI/ML models. Red Hat describes it as an enterprise deployment of Sigstore. Its client tools include cosign, gitsign, and rekor-cli. Signing can use OpenID Connect identities or self-managed keys held in a third-party key management system. A certificate transparency log records signing events in an immutable ledger that Red Hat says is inaccessible to the public. Deployment guidance covers Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux; Amazon EKS is listed as a development preview for RHTAS 1.4. The OpenShift guide requires version 4.16 or later, cluster-admin access, an OIDC provider, and the oc command-line tool. CLI binaries are listed for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Pricing is on request, and a 60-day trial is listed. Signing and verifying AI/ML models with the CLI is marked Technology Preview and is not covered by production SLAs.