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I know GitHub uses it for code development (not user authentication for the website though). I saw this article on the idea: http://neverfear.org/blog/view/3/Secure_website_authentication_using_GPG_keys
Is there a plugin or some open source code to authenticate users in a CMS (e.g. Drupal, Wordpress, Django, etc) with public-private key signatures?
Has anyone implemented this type of website authentication before?
What I think you mean is Mutually Authenticated SSL, were the visitor presents his key as an authentication token. I have implemented it and it can be quite hard to implement at medium to large scale as it usually requires you to create a supporting PKI infrastructure with Self Service.
If you are implementing a small version with this as the only factor of authentication the easiest way to go about it is to use the TLS/SSL plugins your web server provides and have this automatically authenticate your authorized user in the backing service - aka Drupal or Wordpress, etc - once the certificate has been verified.
As a multiple factor authentication you would set up the same service as above, and redirect them to the authentication page of the backing service you are using once the certificate has been verified.
