Category Archives: News

News Relating to CAcert

Technical problems with signer machine

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We have a problem with the signer machine, certificates are currently not created.

There is no way to access the signer machine via internet, to make sure that the machine can not be hacked, so a personal visit to the data center will be necessary to check the machine and get it running again.

Sadly the current Covid-19 pandemy makes travelling to the data center very difficult, so we have no way to fix this problem soon! I’m afraid that it may take several weeks till we get access to the machine and find out the reason for this problem.

Update: Currently we hope that we will be able to make the visit to the data center around easter weekend.

Of course this depends on other developments we have no influence on. For example further restrictions to travelling or intra-EU border crossing may prevent this visit.

Update: In case you can’t access https://www.cacert.org or https://secure.cacert.org currently due to the expired certificate, you may reset the HSTS-status in Chrome:

Open chrome://net-internals/#hsts and delete www.cacert.org and secure.cacert.org settings there. Accessing www.cacert.org will then give you a warning about the expired certificate, but you’ll then be able to continue.

Update: A visit at the datacenter is planned for 2020-05-04 to enable the signer again as well as additional administration tasks on other hardware.

Update: All services are normal again, see new blog post.

Change in the Committee

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Frédéric Grither from France has resigned as treasurer of CAcert Inc. However, he will continue to offer his expertise and experience as a member of the CAcert finance team. On 13 February 2020, the Committee (Board) was able to fill the vacancy by electing Christophe Meesters from Belgium to the Committee. Christophe is a proven financial expert.

Bret Watson from Australia is now also supporting us in the finance team, particularly with regard to Australian issues. The board is very grateful to know that the finances of our fellowship are in good hands and that we have managed to spread the work over several shoulders.

European Data Protection Day and Data Privacy Day

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Today we celebrate the European Data Protection Day founded by the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Data Privacy Day in the United States and Canada. We want to raise awareness of data protection and the right to privacy. At CAcert we provide you digital certificates with which you can protect your private data for example by encrypting your mails. To use them you must offer CAcert some of your data, but in order to protect your privacy, we ask you for fewest data possible and we have strict rules how to handle personal data.

Feel secured with CAcert and choose “I have nothing to hide … except for my privacy.”

CAcert Event in Staffordshire – 11th Feb 2020

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CAcert Event in Staffordshire - 11th Feb 2020 at Keele University

CAcert Event in Staffordshire – 11th Feb 2020, 7pm

Good news: There will be a CAcert event in the United Kingdom!

The CAcert event will be on the 11th February 2020. The main talk will begin at 7pm, the doors will be open for earlier arrivals from 6pm onwards.

The CAcert Event will be at the StaffsLUG Workshop, Internet Central, Innovation Centre, Keele Science Park, ST5 5NB, Newcastle-under-Lyme/Stoke-on-Trent, which you can find details (and maps of) of at this URL: https://staffslug.org.uk/events/

All users of any OS are welcome to come along! Disregard the fact that StaffsLUG are helping to host it!

You should be able to find details of the event at this other URL which is our calendar: https://staffslug.org.uk/calendar/

But essentially it’ll cover…

  • An introduction to CAcert from one of their UK volunteers Alex.
  • We’ll also cover SSL in general for anyone unfamiliar.
  • Time for assurances (for free certificates with CAcert, you’ll need this), to participate in this you’ll need to bring some form of ID as mentioned here (e.g. Passport and Driving License).
  • We’re being joined by people from CAcert and existing users of CAcert who’ll be able to help issue points during the assurance part.

If anyone has any further thoughts about things we should be considering for the event and/or things you like to see covered. Let us know! For the latest details, see our UK mailing list: https://lists.cacert.org/wws/info/cacert-uk

New Committee constituted

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The constituent meeting of the comittee took place on December, 23rd 2019. At this meeting, Sascha T was given a warm welcome. Furthermore, strategic issues were discussed and offices were allocated within the board.

Brian M will remain president, Peter N vice president and Etienne R secretary. The office of treasurer will be filled definitively in the coming weeks.

Deutsch: Am 23. Dezember 2019 hat die konstituierende Sitzung des Vorstandes stattgefunden. Dabei wurden strategische Fragen erörtert und die Ämter innerhalb des Vorstandes verteilt.

Français: La réunion constitutive du comité a eu lieu le 23 décembre 2019. Lors de cette réunion, des questions stratégiques ont été discutées et des bureaux ont été attribués au sein du comité.

Deutschland ist wieder im CAcert-Vorstand vertreten

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An der Generalversammlung wurde die Jahresrechnung 2018/19 genehmigt und der Vorstand im Amt bestätigt. Infolge Rücktritt konnte ein Sitz neu besetzt werden. Mit Sascha T ist Deutschland wieder im Vorstand vertreten. Das macht durchaus Sinn, ist doch die CAcert-Gemeinschaft in diesem Land sehr stark.

English: At the General Meeting, the annual accounts for 2018/19 were approved and the committee was confirmed in office. As a result of resignations, one seat could be newly filled. With Sascha T, Germany is again represented on the board again. This makes sense, as the CAcert community is very strong in this country.

General Meeting 2019 – save the date!

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CAcert’s Annual General Meeting 2019 will be held on Saturday, 30. November 2019, 20:00 UTC = Sat 21:00 Central Europe* = Sat 15:00 NY* = Sun 07:00 Sydney*…..

20:00 GMT / 20:00 UTC / 21:00 CET (Berlin/Zurich) / 15:00 EDT (New York) / Sun 1.12.2019 07:00 AEDT (Sydney)

Further information will follow.

see https://wiki.cacert.org/AGM/Next

Thank you so much!

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Our treasurer tries to owe donations personally. Now we have learned from our German support association secure-U e.V. that many European CAcert supporters have made use of the possibility to transfer donations directly to their bank account. Also a big thank you to all these donors, even if we don’t know them by name!

Herzlichen Dank!

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Unser Kassier bemüht sich, Spenden jeweils persönlich zu verdanken. Nun haben wir von unserem deutschen Unterstützungsverein secure-U e.V. erfahren, dass sehr viele europäische CAcert-Unterstützer von der Möglichkeit Gebrauch gemacht haben, Spenden direkt auf deren Bankkonto zu überweisen. Auch all diesen Spendern ein herzliches Dankeschön, auch wenn wir sie nicht namentlich kennen!

Merci mille fois pour votre soutien !

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Notre trésorier s’efforce de répondre personnellement à de nombreux donateurs. Secure-U, l’association allemande qui accueille les dons par virement bancaire en Euros au bénéfice de CAcert, nous a averti qu’un grand nombre de donateurs nous ont soutenus par ce moyen. Nous ne les connaissons pas personnellement, mais voulons leur dire ici notre gratitude.