Après deux éditions virtuelles et des annulations, une certaine normalité revient peu à peu dans nos vies. Les conférences sont également de retour. Cet été, CAcert était déjà présent à la FrosCon dans la région de Cologne-Bonn.

Comme c’est désormais la tradition, de nombreuses conférences proposent aux projets libres et open source un stand où ils peuvent présenter leur travail “en vrai” au public.

Nous pouvons y échanger des informations, faire des démonstrations de logiciels, interagir avec les utilisateurs et les développeurs, distribuer des cadeaux publicitaires, vendre des marchandises ou accepter des dons. Tout est possible !

Tout est possible avec ton aide. Consulte donc rapidement le calendrier des événements pour 2023 sur le wiki ! https://wiki.cacert.org/Events quelle conférence t’attire? À laquelle aimerais-tu participer contacte-nous (secretary@c.o.), car nous ne pouvons être sur place et rencontrer les gens dans la “vraie” vie que s’il y a des comme toi qui aident à notre stand une partie du temps conférence.

Profite de l’expérience des “vieux de la vieille”. Utilise notre matériel d’information. Découvre à l’avance les nouveautés importantes. Gagne des compétences en matière de présentation. Rencontre des gens passionnants.

Behind the scenes …

Leave a reply

… we’ve just activated our own OCSP-resolver on our new arm64-servers.

This sounds a little bit unspectacular, but it’s a big milestone while replacing hard- and software within our environment as the old OCSP-resolver-software could not be ported to a recent debian and arm64-environment.

All other critical services (like Nameserver and CRL-Serving) were already moved successfully to our new power-saving machines (2 Raspberry Pi4) in the last weeks/months. OCSP needed some development and testing.

The virtual machines in the old environment are now stopped, within the next days the (power-consuming) sun3-server will then get it’s final shutdown and will be removed from CAcert-Rack during the next visit at the datacenter.

Our main website and signer-software will still be kept running on dedicated servers.

Upcoming Changes for www.cacert.org

2 Replies

Today we switched the connection to our main website as a preparation for a “bigger” change. Unfortunately this (temporary) change is not IPv6-capable, so only IPv4 is working currently.

Over the weekend we plan to move www.cacert.org to another server for a more recent environment and add a second firewall to our rack. During this server-transition you may face some issues while using www.cacert.org, after the weekend the services should be normal again.

Early next week we’ll enable IPv6 again for our main website (maybe by using a new IPv6-Address, but that’s not yet decided).

All other services (like blog/wiki/bugs/…) should remain active as usual as there is currently no planned update.

Froscon 2022

Leave a reply

Die FrOSCon (FRee and Open Source CONference) ist eine jährlich stattfindende Konferenz, die von der Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg und dem FrOSCon e.V. organisiert wird. Die FrOSCon bietet eine Vielzahl von Vorträgen und Workshops zu freier und Open Source Software. Die Veranstaltung findet seit 2006 regelmäßig Ende August statt. Eine große Bandbreite an Referenten verspricht zwei spannende Tage. Die Organisation wird ausschließlich von Freiwilligen übernommen.

Selbstverständlich ist auch CAcert bei der Froscon 2022 mit dabei. Wenn du während einiger Zeit mithilfst, zusammen mit unserem Event-Team den CAcert-Stand zu betreuen, bekommst du natürlich eine Aussteller-Badge und damit auch Zugang zum VIP-Bereich. Bitte melde dich bei events@cacert.org für eine Teilnahme.

Nameserver-Changes for CAcert.org -update-

Leave a reply

Update: Nameserver-transition is currently finished, new DNSSEC-records are set and active. KSK and ZSK were replaced by CSK.

In the ongoing process to update hard- and software we’re moving our main domain cacert.org to another master-nameserver-machine (with different nameserver-software) within our rack …

As we’re using DNSSEC to secure our domains, we need to update KSK and ZSK-keys for our domains during this progress, too.

Therefore you may face some DNSSEC-errors or issues in resolving cacert.org-domains within the next days, but this should resolve itself within some hours/days.

As soon as the transition of the nameserver-move is finished, I’ll update this post.

Todo: Give ns1.cacert.org the “old” nameserver-address again (after next hardware-change onsite) so secondary-nameserver ns3.cacert.org can get back to work. ns3 is currently not listed at our registrar, so not active for CAcert-Domains.

Revocation Lists and the Future of X.509

2 Replies

Geoff Huston from APNIC talked at the RIPE 84 about certificate revocation as a “sanction”. He concludes that the certificate infrastructure is not working, and instead suggests DNS is the answer. You can put keys in the DNS and use TTL to control the caching lag of the information.

How do you see it? What conclusions should we draw from this at CAcert? Write your comment below!

6th OpenPGP Email Summit

Leave a reply

There will be the 6th OpenPGP Email Summit on Friday, May 27 & Saturday, May 28, 2022 in Geneva (Switzerland) at the offoffices of Proton AG (the company behind ProtonMail and OpenPGP.js) (those interested, please ask the secretary to forward you the invitation) https://wiki.gnupg.org/OpenPGPEmailSummit202205

This is an event open for anybody involved in the development of email clients using OpenPGP for encryption, and related software. The agenda will be driven by the attendees. Anyone may propose any topic for discussion, as long as he is ready to lead the discussion.

As you know, you can having a CAcert signature on your PGP keyring. Having a CAcert signature on your PGP keyring signifies that your identity has been verified (assured) by at least two other people (that’s the only way to get more than 50 Assurance Points). So it gives credibility to your PGP keys’ authenticity.

If you want to strengthen the relationship between CAcert and OpenPGP, please feel free to representet CAcert at the 6th OpenPGP Email Summit.

Wer ist Anonymous?

Leave a reply

https://www.nzz.ch/technologie/anonymous-wer-steckt-hinter-dem-hacker-kollektiv-ld.1678465

Sie wurden bekannt, indem sie sorglosen Umgang mit Sicherheit ausnutzten: Mit geleakten E-Mails und gehackten russischen Servern sorgte die Internetaktivisten-Gruppe Anonymous auch jüngst wieder für Schlagzeilen. Doch wer steckt hinter dem Kollektiv? Hier teilen die Investigativ-Journalisten der NZZ ihre Erkenntnisse über Ursprünge, Funktionsweisen und Tätigkeiten von Anonymous mit uns.

(Upcoming) work at the Datacenter

Leave a reply

Update #1:

Moving www.cacert.org to new hardware was not successful due to some firewall settings, so we decided to keep the old server active.

During the next days/weeks we’ll change some firewall settings remotely so short downtimes may apply before we try to activate the new server during the next visit in some weeks.

Original note:

During the next visit at the datacenter on Friday we’re doing some hardware-changes within our rack, especially for our main website www.cacert.org.

As a preparation we will disable most of the services on www.cacert.org on Tuesday evening. The site will be fully operational again after the new server is up and running (most likely during Friday morning).

All other subdomains like blog/wiki/… will only have a short outage while we install a new firewall.

— this post will be updated after returning back from the datacenter —

Prepare the reconstruction of Ukraine now!

Leave a reply

DEUTSCH Jetzt den Wiederaufbau der Ukraine vorbereiten! In der Ukraine hatte CAcert vor Kriegsausbruch Assurer in Lemberg und Kiew. Befinnden sich zur Zeit in Ihrer Umgebung ukrainische Flüchtlinge? Dann helfen Sie diesen, Assurer zu werden.

Zum Beispiel indem Sie beim CATS übersetzen. Indem Sie ihnen bei den Assurance beistehen und andere Assurer beiziehen, sich selber assuren lassen.

ENGLISCH Prepare the reconstruction of Ukraine now! In Ukraine, CAcert had assurers in Lviv and Kiev before the outbreak of war. Are there Ukrainian refugees in your area at the moment? Then help them to become assurers. For example, by translating at CATS. By assisting them with the assurances and involving other assurers, or by becoming an assurer yourself.

POLSKI Przygotuj si? do odbudowy Ukrainy ju? teraz! Na Ukrainie CAcert mia? przed wybuchem wojny asesorów we Lwowie i Kijowie. Czy w Twojej okolicy mieszkaj? obecnie uchod?cy z Ukrainy? Nast?pnie pomó? im sta? si? asesorami. Na przyk?ad t?umacz?c w CATS. Pomagaj?c im w uzyskaniu zapewnienia i anga?uj?c innych asekuruj?cych lub samemu staj?c si? asekuratorem.