Category Archives: Information

General news/information to the CAcert community or about security in general

Statement of direction given by SGM

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Dear members,

there were some mails which were referencing the direction of the new board. This is interesting as the new board so far did not give any statement. Also no new board member either at the SGM nor later did such a statement. Even while it is assumed by many, that I am close to the new board or some of its members, I do not have a clear view what the new board will do.

Abstimmung

CC BY NC SA HDZimmermann

However, there WAS a direction given last Saturday. It was given by the statement of direction given by SGMof CAcert Inc with the voice of the SGM. The new board is bound to respect this statement.

The statement of the SGM is:
“The membership is disheartened by the recently elected committee and its persistent disrespect for properly established arbitration, policies and  procedures. It is resolved, that the committee as constituted no longer enjoys the confidence of the members, and each committee member is removed from their position. We stopped short to resolve, that CAcert Inc has been placed into an unacceptable breach of our CAcert Community Agreement, is no longer acting in the interests of the community, and is therefore no longer a suitable vehicle for the community’s property and role as executive.

And instead resolve,
* that CAcert Inc’s actions were the sole responsibility of the committee members.
* that CAcert Inc with a duly formed committee that respects and abides by the rulings of arbitration enjoys our confidence in the future,
* and that the liabilities of CAcert Inc during the period of troubles should remain strictly limited under our DRP as if arbitration was not suspended.

The new committee is to create a detailed and fully transparent, uncensored report of the old committee’s activities since the AGM to which all members of the community may contribute. This report is to be presented to a general meeting for ratification.”

As the one who was selected to do the minutes, I so far can verify the counting of the votes for any part of this statement. I give a CARS that the votes counted by the vote-bot match those of 3 logs of the irc-channel and the proxy-votes were done according to a list created by the former secretary. With the exception of the “we stopped short”-motion, all these parts were given with a clear or even overwhelming majority:

“disheartend sentence”: 28 : 8 : 3
“board removed”: 22 : 14 : 4
“unacceptable breach”: 15 : 16 : 9
“responsibility of old board”: 29 : 11 : 0
“report”: 38 : 0 : 3
[aye : naye : abstain]

41 members-votes were present during those decisions.

Kind regards,
Eva Stöwe, CARS

New board elected

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Abstimmung

CC BY NC SA HDZimmermann

On April, 9th, 2016, the members of CAcert Inc held an SGM, in which a new board has been elected. The membership felt disheartened by the formerly elected committee and its persistent disrespect for properly established arbitration policies and procedures. This was carried by a motion which shows the importance of being a member of the association.

The full agenda points of the SGM can be found on https://wiki.cacert.org/SGM/20160409?action=recall&rev=13. You may note some placeholders in other topics as later revisions which corrected these items included further agenda items which could not be moved on for the reason of notification of the members in time.

After counting proxies for the votes, the european board members of the prior board resigned. 5 new members were then accepted, including one who got expelled by the old board end of February 2016 because he stood up for an independent arbitration which he wrote in the members mailing list. The old committee was removed and a new committee was elected. The new board members are: Ben Ball (AU), Piers Lauders (AU), Kevin Dawson (AU), Ian Grigg, Gero Treuner, Dirk Astrath, and Mathias Subik. The new committee was also instructed to create a report of the activities of the former board since the AGM. All members of the community may contribute.

On 2016-04-16 at 12:00 UTC (noon) the first meeting of the new commitee will take place in the IRC channel #board-meeting on the CAcert IRC network. Everybody is welcome to participate, please find the agenda on https://wiki.cacert.org/Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2016-04-16.

Successful Root-Re-Sign

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On March 12th 2016 CAcert performed the Root Re-Signing at our data center in Ede, NL. After the initial attempt[1] had to be postponed on short notice.

The process followed the procedures that are available in the Wiki[2]/SVN[3] along with the tooling[4] used.

The re-signing was conducted by two CAcert critical administrators, a secure-u access engineer, and supervised by CAcert’s internal auditor.
Its execution has been announced on the cacert-systemlog mailing list[5]. The execution report by the critical team has been published there too[6]. The report of the auditor is published in our Wiki[7].

We want to send special thanks to all who helped in preparing and testing the procedures and tools for the process and thus made this smooth execution possible.

CAcert Inc. board tried to have the part for creation of the needed software to be held in public but was overruled by some of the involved teams.

As the re-signed root certificates are available to CAcert the next steps are to publish them to the public. This will need some time as the software team needs to prepare the code changes[8][9][10] and have them reviewed. Once this is done the publishing of the re-signed root certificates will be announced on the blog and all community members will get informed via e-mail.

[1] https://blog.cacert.org/2015/12/re-signing-root-certificate/
[2] https://wiki.cacert.org/Roots/Class1ResignProcedure
[3] https://svn.cacert.org/CAcert/SystemAdministration/signer/re-sign-2016/implementation.txt
[4] https://github.com/CAcertOrg/cacert-procedures/tree/root-resign-sha256/rootResignSHA256
[5] https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-systemlog/2016-03/msg00001.html
[6] https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-systemlog/2016-03/msg00002.html
[7] https://wiki.cacert.org/Audit/Results/session2016.1
[8] https://bugs.cacert.org/view.php?id=1305
[9] https://bugs.cacert.org/view.php?id=1254
[10] https://bugs.cacert.org/view.php?id=1194

CAcert at CeBIT 2016

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German version below

On the world’s largest computer fair, the CeBIT in Hannover, DE, CAcert should not be missing out. From March 14th through March 18th Assurers and Assurees are meeting each other at 12:00 CET outside Hall 2 in direction of the green. In case of bad weather the assurances take place directly at the glass front of Hall 2 outside under the roofing.

More details can be found in the Wiki.
CeBIT meeting point

Further events with attendance of CAcert — with a booth at OpenSource events — can be reviewed in the CAcert wiki at http://wiki.cacert.org/Events/UpcomingEvents.

[German]
Auf der weltgrößten Computermesse, der CeBIT in Hannover, darf auch CAcert nicht fehlen. Vom 14. bis 18. März treffen sich Assurer und Assurees täglich ab 12 Uhr vor Halle 2 in Richtung der Grünfläche. Bei schlechtem Wetter finden die Assurances direkt an der Glasfront von Halle 2 außen unter der Überdachung statt. Mehr Informationen finden sich im Wiki.

Weitere Veranstaltungen mit CAcert-Beteiligung – mit eigenem Stand auf OpenSource-Veranstaltungen – sind im CAcert-Wiki unter http://wiki.cacert.org/Events/UpcomingEvents einsehbar.

Safer Internet Day 2016

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On 2016-02-09 is this year’s Safer Internet Day[1] asking its participants to “Play your part for a better internet!”

The Safer Internet Day was first celebrated in 1999 to strengthen the awareness for security within and on the internet.

CAcert’s share in this effort is providing everybody the means to protect their communication by sending encrypted emails or using free client certificates for authentication.

So take a moment and think about taking part in one of the several events and help to promote email encryption with CAcert S/MIME certificates.

And stay safe on the internet!

[1] https://www.saferinternetday.org/

Re-Signing Root Certificate

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On Friday, 29th January 2016, the long-planned re-signing of CAcert’s root certificate will finally take place.

This action has been overdue for quite some time now as several browser and OS vendors have dropped support for MD5-signed certificates or otherwise made such certificates unusable.

The re-signing process [1] has been tested successfully at last FrOSCon in August 2015 [2].

Attendance of the re-signing ceremony will be open to the public and will take place near CAcert’s data center in Ede, NL. As soon as more details become available we’ll provide a wiki page with the exact schedule and location.

UPDATE: Unfortunately the Re-Signing event had to be postponed due to shortage of manpower in the different teams involved in the process. The currently a new date is being searched. As soon as the new date is available it will be announced here.

[1] https://wiki.cacert.org/Roots/Class1ResignProcedure
[2] https://wiki.cacert.org/Audit/Results/session2015.4

Get Audit ready

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The new elected CAcert Inc board want to share their mission statement for the current fiscal year.

We want to help CAcert to become the world’s most trusted service provider able to help people around the world

  • to secure their privacy
  • to secure their identity

in the area of digital electronic communications. We all want to lead an operating Certificate Authority providing highly secure certificates for free to the public in which everybody can trust. The next central milestone for the development of our CA is to pass an audit with flying colors.

We will subordinate all of our activities to reach this goal within the next years.

The first serious challenge to take will be the resign of our root certificate within the next 3 months (hopefully on the eve of FOSDEM 2016).

We want to continue with the tasks to prepare the New Root Escrow within the next year.
To secure the existence of CAcert for a long time we want to prepare the move to a hosting country in Europe within the next year.

Today we ask you to have confidence in our plans and personal integrity and hope that all of you will support us in fulfilling these tasks.

Please allow to remember to McDonald’s main maxim:

„All of us is more than one of us“

The new board is composed of
Reinhard Mutz, President CAcert Inc.
Jürgen Bruckner, Vice President CAcert Inc.
Marcus Mängel, Secretary
Stefan Thode, Treasurer
Felix Dörre, Board member
Peter Yuill, Board member

Successful process tests of New Root and Escrow and Class 1 Root resigning

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On Sunday at FrOSCon 10 CAcert successfully tested the New Root and Escrow (NRE) process and performed a test run of the long expected Class 1 Resigning.

Members of the software team, the critical admins, the NRE team, and the internal auditor met in a session, which was open to the public, to test these long prepared tasks.

The process started with checking that the needed hardware was running and was setup up according to the process definition. In a first step the defined tasks were then executed manually to proof that the procedures produces the desired results. In a second step the manual tasks were automated where possible and the script was tested and checked according to the process definition.

The results show the expected outcome.

The internal auditor was pleased with the good and professional preparation of the test and the successful outcome. The new root keys created during the NRE test will be used for a test server based on Gigi and Cassiopeia.

Related Information:

ATE Nykobing, Denmark on September 20th 2015

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[Danish and German version below]
On Sunday 20th September there will be “A day of Internet Security and CAcert ATE” hosted by ShowIT Media [1].

Agenda

10:00 Welcome
10:15 A Security status on the Internet by Bitdefender
11:00 A Quick Introduction to CAcert
11:20 Time out for lunch
12:15 CAcert Assurance Training Event (ATE)
17:00 Thank you for coming / Safe journey home.

All speeches will be held in English. There will be the possiblity to gether at least 100 Assurance Points.

Place:
ShowIT Media
Slotsbryggen 14 A-D
4800 Nykobing F
Denmark

More information can be found [2], to register: I will attend the ATE Nykobing

[1] https://www.showitmedia.eu/uk_cert.html
[2] https://wiki.cacert.org/Events/2015-09-20-ATE-DK-Nykobing

[Danish version]

Søndag den 20. September afholdes ”En dag med Internet sikkerhed og CAcert ATE” hos ShowIT Media [1].

Program:

10:00 Velkomst
10:15 ”En status på sikkerheden på internettet” af Bitdefender
11:00 En kort præsentation af CAcert
11:20 Frokostpause
12:15 CAcert Assurance Training Event (ATE)
17:00 Tak for I dag / Kom godt hjem

Alle indlæg holdes på Engelsk. Det vil være muligt at samle mindst 100 Assurance point.

Du kan finde mere information på [2] og registrere dig her: Jeg deltager i ATE i Nykøbing

[German version]

Am Sonntag den 20. September veranstaltet die ShowIT Media “Einen Tag der Internetsicherheit und ein CAcert ATE/”A day of Internet Security and CAcert ATE” [1].

Agenda

10:00 Grußwort
10:15 Ein Sicherheitsstatusbericht für das Internet durch Bitdefender
11:00 Eine kurze Dartstellung von CAcert
11:20 Mittagspause
12:15 CAcert Assurance Training Event (ATE)
17:00 Ende der Veranstaltung

Alle Vorträge werden in Englisch gehalten. Es wird die Möglichkeit bestehen mindestens 100 Assurancepunkte zu sammeln.

Weitere Informationen zum Event unter [2], zum Anmelden: Ich nehme ATE in Nykobing teil.