Es ist soweit. Der Verein secure-u mit dem Zweck “der Förderung der Sicherheit im Internet und die Unterstützung von Anwendern bei der Anwendung sicherer Kommunikation” wurde gegründet. Dieser Vereinszweck soll insbesondere durch die Förderung des Projektes CAcert erreicht werden.

Nach Eintragung des Vereins in das Vereinsregister und Genehmigung des Gemeinnützigkeitsstatus wird es dann auch in Deutschland möglich sein Spenden an das Projekt CAcert gegen steuerlich absetzbare Spendenquittung zu tätigen.

Der Verein soll durch die erwirtschafteten Einnahmen / Spenden u.a. auch lokale CAcert Tätigkeiten (z.B. Messeauftritte) unterstützen. Nach dem holländischen Verein “Oophaga” ist mit dem deutschen Verein “secure-u” somit der zweite Landesverein am Start, und das Ziel das Projekt CAcert auf möglichst viele voneinander unabhängige Schultern zu verteilen rückt ein wenig näher.

Neben der finanziellen Unterstützung des Projektes CAcert soll der Verein aber auch Kern der deutschen / deutschsprachigen Community sein und als direktes Bindeglied dieser Community zu CAcert dienen. Weitere Informationen zum Verein: http://www.secure-u.de (momentan gibt es noch nicht viel zu sehen, Inhalte wie Satzung, Gründungsmitglieder, Infos zur Mitgliedschaft, etc. folgt in den nächsten Tagen …).

(english readers please read below)

CAcert wird auch dieses Jahr wieder auf dem diesjährigen
ChaosCommunicationCongress zwischen den Feiertagen
vom 27. bis 30.12.2007 vertreten sein und
wird hier kostenlose Assurances anbieten.

Interessenten sollten sich zunächst kostenlos (wenn nicht schon
geschehen) einen Account bei CAcert.org anlegen (falls dies nicht vor
dem Congress möglich ist geht dies auch zeitnahe nach der Veranstaltung);
notwendig hierzu sind neben dem Namen lediglich eine gültige
E-Mail-Adresse und ein möglichst sicheres Passwort.

Am Stand kann nun dieses Benutzerkonto verifiziert und die
dazugehörige Person identifiziert werden. Für diesen als
“Assurance” bezeichneten Vorgang ist jedoch die Vorlage
mindestens zwei gültigen Ausweisen, eines davon sollte in
amtlicher Lichtbildausweis (z.B. Personalausweis oder Reisepass)
sein, die dann am Stand überprüft und verifiziert werden.

Nach erfolgter Überprüfung erhält jeder Benutzer Punkte, die
seine Vertrauenswürdigkeit widerspiegeln. Zum einen kann ein
so assurter Benutzer im internen Bereich der CAcert-Website
selber beglaubigte Zertifikate ausstellen, aber auch über
ein “Web of Trust” Punkte an andere Benutzer vergeben.

Assurer, Interessierte und Besucher können sich gerne unter
http://wiki.cacert.org/wiki/24C3 über den aktuellen Stand
informieren sowie sich als Helfer eintragen.

———————————————————-

english version:

CAcert will be represented on this year’s
ChaosCommunicationCongress (aka 24C3)
from Dec 27th to Dec 30th and will yet
again offer CAcert Assurances for free.

Interested parties should create an account on CAcert.org
(if not already happened); if this isn’t possible before the congress
then it could also be done right on the congress.
all you need besides your name is a valid email address
and a hopefully safe password.

At the booth we can then both verify this user account and the person.

This verification is know as an “assurance”. For this you need
to identify with at least *two* valid official identifications,
e.g. your identity card and your passport.

After the check has been carried out every user
receives points which reflect his trustworthiness.
An assured person can then issue certificates from the
internal area of the CAcert web site and also issue
points by assuring other people via the “web of trust”.

Assurers, interested people and visitors are welcome to inform
themselves at http://wiki.cacert.org/wiki/24C3 about
the booth as well as put down their name as a helper.

Link to 24C3: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Main_Page

To allow a much higher and more effective pickup for snail mail receipts CAcert has opened a new postbox:

CAcert, P.O. Box 4107, Denistone East NSW 2112, Australia.

Please do not use the older address anymore. Work has been started to correct the addresses appearing on TTP and CAP forms, wiki, etc. Snail mail sent to the old address will be forwarded to the new address for a while.

CAcert ist nun auch als Gruppe im vorrangig deutschsprachigen Portal XING (ehemals OpenBC) vertreten. XING – das Netzwerk für Business Professionals, ist die ideale Plattform für Fachgruppen und Gemeinschaften. XING fördert Geschäftsbeziehungen, die auf Vertrauen basieren. Die Theorie „Jeder kennt jeden über sechs Ecken“ findet auf XING ihre praktische Umsetzung: Die Plattform zeigt ihren Mitgliedern die Kontakte ihrer Kontakte an und ermöglicht ihnen so, ihr persönliches Netzwerk auszubauen.

Weitere Informationen: https://www.xing.com/net/cacert/

Man kann dieser Gruppe einfach über diesen Link http://www.xing.com/group-12721.f8ad2f beitreten.

As Secretary of CAcert, Inc., I am proud to announce the elected Board members and their roles:

Greg Rose, President;

Teus Hagen, Vice President;
Robert Cruikshank, Treasurer and Public Officer;

Evaldo Gardenali, Secretary;

Guillaume ROMAGNY, Ordinary Member.
The Board was elected on the Annual General Meeting held on November 17th 2007, and the mandate lasts until the next Annual General Meeting.

Ede, Netherlands, 22st October 2007

Stichting Oophaga Foundation announces that the CAcert service provision of free digital certificates will now be hosted in the Netherlands.

The service is based on Open Source software technology under the name of CAcert. CAcert’s certificate service is an alternative to the commercial Certificate Authorities (CAs) for which users normally have to pay a yearly fee. A certificate can be used to apply digital signatures to secure a document, a file, a programm, a web site, or to authenticate the sender of an email.

CAcert’s certificate service, originally initiated in Australia, is now undergoing a comprehensive upgrade in services, professionalism and security. As part of this process, a major part of the service has moved to Ede, Netherlands, to the premises of internet services provider BIT.

Teus Hagen from the NLnet foundation, one of the founders of Stichting Oophaga Foundation: “Commercial CAs are used by many big companies nowadays, but there is huge interest in free and reliable digital certificate support. We should remember that software developers freely develop many plugins for commonly used applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office, and consumers want to secure their private data. At this moment CAcert has about 100.000 users. We expect that this will be doubled in about six months“.

Sponsors

Stichting Oophaga Foundation is a fully independent organisation. Dutch companies and service providers have been approached by Oophaga to support the hosting provision with financial and hardware donations. The goal is to create a separate and secured location with brand new and reliable equipment in Netherlands. Companies such as SUN Netherlands, AMD, Cisco, Net.work Appliances and Tunix have provided the equipment and support for free. The industrial internet provider BIT is hosting the CAcert services and provides a very well secured environment.

Leo Willems of Tunix: “TUNIX always supports good Open Source projects. For example, for our own development of the Tunix firewall, we use FreeBSD. In this respect, we offer both free support to CAcert and Oophaga for securing their infrastructure and free consultation for the rehosting of these services to Netherlands.”

Michel van Osenbruggen of BIT: “I like this exceptional initiative, mainly because of the free certificates. With this free service provision, we stimulate the usage of digital certificates so the Internet becomes more secure. We are glad to host the CAcert services in our data centre, because we contribute in a very positive way to the Internet community. The decision of CAcert and Oophaga to choose our data centre underscores that BIT2 fulfils the highest requirements in the area of security and safeguarding.”

About CAcert
CAcert was founded in 2002 in Sydney Australia by Duane Groth. He was a young Australian photographer and programmer who was looking for a secure and costeffective authentication and identification system for the regional wireless access project across Sydney. Through his efforts, CAcert Inc. was created as nonprofit Australian-based association.

Initially, it was a local service WiFi access provider in New South Wales. Today it is better known as the free certificate authority at www.cacert.org. The free certificate service grew enormously and spread around the world very quickly. CAcert usage can also be found now in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, United States, Canada, and Brazil.

A registered user of CAcert can obtain digital certificates, which secure their identity and authenticity by means of a Web-of-Trust of assurances. Users can obtain free authenticated certificates from CAcert for client and server applications. The certificates are based on the X.509 standard, and often are used as a digital identification tool. Most email applications, internet browsers and document applications support the X.509 certificate standard and usage.

About Stichting Oophaga Foundation
The Dutch foundation has several goals: To stimulate the widespread usage and application of free digital certificates; to obtain and maintain secured privacy on the Internet, free use of secure and authenticated communication on the Internet, and development of Open Software for free use of certificates for this type of communication.

More information is available from www.oophaga.org, www.cacert.org, and wiki.cacert.org.

CAcert Board has just approved the Membership Fees Amnesty. We are accepting any late payments for the year of 2007, which is due July 1st, as redemption of any previous debts and then returning the member to financial good standing with the association. The deadline for such payments is set to November 13th 2007.

This is a chance for users that forgot to pay the membership fees for some time, but are still interested in participating in CAcert Incorporated.

Please email me at evaldo@cacert.org so we can arrange for the payment.

Members that were accepted after July 1st and did not pay yet should email me for their first payment.

Kind Regards,

Evaldo Gardenali
Secretary
CAcert Incorporated

Dear CAcert, Inc. Association members,

This is an announcement for the CAcert, Incorporated Annual General Meeting to be held on November 17th 2007 22:00 UTC, on our IRC server located at irc://irc.cacert.org/CAcert or ircs://irc.cacert.org:7000/CAcert (secure), channel #CAcert.

Proposed agenda for the meeting can be found at http://wiki.cacert.org/wiki/NextAnnualGeneralMeeting. Please submit any topics not covered there to evaldo@cacert.org, my CAcert Secretary email address, so that we can make any needed arrangements.

It is now time to nominate your fellow members for Committee (“Board”) elections, as the Committee is completely replaced on each Annual General Meeting. Please send your signed nomination and seconding emails to evaldo@cacert.org. Candidates should send me a short paragraph about themselves for inclusion on the wiki page for the elections.

The intering Committee members that are now empowered signalled that they are available for reelection, and that they are seeking a new Committee to be formed with 5 members.

Regards,

Evaldo Gardenali
Secretary
CAcert Incorporated