RE: [pki-tc] PKI/e-business IETF draft co-editor

From
June Leung <>
Date
2003-03-05T22:48:03+00:00
ID
Thread
RE: [pki-tc] PKI/e-business IETF draft co-editor
Hi 
Todd,

 

FundSERV has written a PKI Deployment paper and it's posted in the 
Oasis PKI Member Section. http://www.pkiforum.org/whitepapers.html  
Oasis is in the process of publishing it in an Oasis 
template.   

I 
hope you can find something useful there.

 

June

June 
Leung
PKI Department
FundSERV Inc.
1730 130 King St W
Toronto ON M5X 
1E5
T. 416.350.2516
F. 416.362.6668 

  
-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Rundgren 
  [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 
  4:18 PM
To: Todd Colvin; 
  
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] PKI/e-business 
  IETF draft co-editor

  
Todd,

  
I can't say that I have studied internal uses of 
  PKI very much unless one could call a national or bank-system as 
  "internal".   A bank in Sweden have 1 million on-line users using 
  PKI for authentication and signatures.   It seems to be working 
  fine, although the solution only works on windows as well as being non-mobile 
  (soft certs).   Note that this system is 100% 
  web-based.

  
 

  
I believe the only internal PKIs of any 
  importance are to be found in the healthcare sector.  Although I'm 
  personally working in the e-commerce field, I think the real question from my 
  point of view, is how to communicate between organizations.  
  Here I think that the models currently deployed based on establishing huge 
  X.500 inter-organization directories have been very time-consuming and 
  not always too sucessful.   Basically I think this is an 
  incorrect use of information technology, which will make these efforts lose 
  value rather soon.

  
 

  
I therefore propose something I call 
  the "Bank Model PKI" (as it is really an "invention" made by 
  banks) to minimize the "interface" between organizations rather than 
  forcing organizations to expose information concerning exployees that few 
  private enterprises will ever accept.: http://www.x-obi.com/OBI400/pki4org.pdf

  
 

  
regards

  
Anders

  
    
----- Original Message ----- 

    
From: 
    Todd 
    Colvin 

    
To: Anders Rundgren ;  
    

    
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 
    21:27

    
Subject: RE: [pki-tc] PKI/e-business 
    IETF draft co-editor

    

    
Anders,

    
 

    
Do 
    you know of any good reference material that has detailed information 
    regarding an actual implementation of PKI? I'm looking for something that is 
    sort of a case study that explains what exactly was done, why, and what did 
    not work and why it did not. Also, for now I'm more focused on internal PKI 
    systems rather than something used for e-commerce, although an internal-use 
    system with support for email encryption and digital signatures is of 
    interest as well.

    
 

    
Thanks,

    

    
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
Todd Colvin 
Computer Training Specialist 
SEARCH Group, Inc. 
7311 Greenhaven 
    Dr., Suite 145 
Sacramento, CA 
    95831 
(916) 392-2550 Fax (916) 
    392-3271 
http://www.search.org/ 

    
      
-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Rundgren 
      [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, February 28, 
      2003 12:07 AM
To: David Sweigert; 
      
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] PKI/e-business 
      IETF draft co-editor

      
David,

      
The commercial use of digital 
      signatures is grooving but I claim that the sector I'm most involved 
      in, B2B transactions, will be one of the last one to use such.  
      Mainly due to the almost total disconnect between PKI and business systems 
      not only on a technical ground (the thing the IETF draft is addressing), 
      but basic questions like what kind of certificates you actually 
      need.  The enclosed discussion papers shed some light on this 
      question.  This part is by the way now discussed in the EU and quite 
      a number of countries now fully support the idea of legal-entity-only 
      signatures, in spite of not having a counter-part in the physical 
      world.  Still, a number of people out there claim that this is 
      "madness".

      
 

      
I also consider business models as 
      represented by Identrus et al (relying-party-paid) as a sure way to make 
      B2B stay away from using PKI or rather use their own PKI in a 
      hub-and-spokes way (the big party issues certificates for their smaller 
      customers/suppliers to use) which does not scale very well.  As Bill 
      Gates wrote already 1995: There should be no markup on (non-payment) 
      business transactions over the Internet, just inexpensive software.  
      But banks, who have strong aspirations in the CA segment, have a long 
      frustrating journey ahead of them, before they finally will realize that 
      identification is not yet another payment system.  Trust and 
      identity, in contrast to payments, can be "settled" between two parties on 
      their own, which makes the difference.

      
 

      
To my knowledge not a single of the numerous 
      e-invoice projects run by banks over the world use PKI.  My guess is 
      that PKI is rightfully experienced as too messy.  Without 
      working TTPs having reasonable offerings, shared secrets seem much simpler 
      to deploy as such can be communicated in simple ways including 
      verbally.  PKI is technically redundant unless you achieve a 
      peer-to-peer based operation which is currently virtually non-existent for 
      other reasons as well.

      
 

      
The only working PKI markets I know of is Web 
      server certificates by VeriSign et al and local PKIs supporting 
      e-Governments.

      
 

      
For individuals, the fact that the smart card 
      industry have not after 10 years or so managed to come up with a standard 
      PKI card and built-in support in major OSes, still makes PKI 
      "non-standard" in the eyes of IS-managers.  To store certificates on 
      the hard disk is not an alternative in a corporate 
      environment.

      
 

      
BTW, I hope that the PKI-TC will address some 
      or all of the issues raised here.

      
 

      
 

      
Anders

      
        
----- Original Message ----- 

        
From: 
        David Sweigert 

        
To: Anders Rundgren ;  
        

        
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 
        22:00

        
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] 
        PKI/e-business IETF draft co-editor

        

        
The lack of commercial usage of digital 
        signature technology is about to change.

        
 

        
David Sweigert, CISSP

        
          
----- Original Message ----- 

          
From: 
          Anders Rundgren 

          
To:  
          

          
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 
          1:17 PM

          
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] 
          PKI/e-business IETF draft co-editor

          

          

          
David,

          
If you take a look on the link I 
          supplied
( http://www.x-obi.com/OBI400/draft-rundgren-pkix-pnppki4ws-00.pdf )

          
it should give some indications of one 
          area that I feel does not work to well.

          
 

          
A powerpoint is also 
          available:

          
http://www.x-obi.com/OBI400/PnPPKI4WS.ppt

          
 

          
I.e. it is really Web Services that are 
          addressed as this is what most people believe is where both PKI and 
          e-business will be in a relatively short period.  Below is an 
          extract from another posting highlighting some basic problems that the 
          work is supposed to address:

          
 

          
First it is important to note 
          that digital signatures are virtually non-existent in B2B so what 
          follows here is "theory".   Digital signatures have a major 
          problem which did not exist in the paper-world.  A signature 
          on paper is a technically imprecise way of giving 
          "authenticy" to a document.  A digital signature on the other 
          hand identifies the signer in a technically very strong way.  
          Now, lets say that you have an invoice from ACME Corp (using 
          any of the rather arbitrary ways to identify this), what is the 
          stronger part of the identity (i.e. the certificate) supposed to 
          contain?  And even worse, if you use personal signatures what 
          should these contain?  John Doe at ACME Corp?  Are business 
          systems supposed to cross-check between the claimed identity in the 
          business document and the certificate?  I believe so, but here 
          there is mostly zero interoperability and hardly any normative 
          documents to find. Consortiums like ebXML don't  touch such 
          issues and PKI folks typically shun business systems like the 
          plague.  In case anybody of this list is interested in this area 
          (maybe even co-authoring), I'm currently toiling with an IETF draft 
          (enclosed), trying to "marry" PKI and business systems.  It is 
          worth noting that the e-Government in Sweden have (in their actual 
          systems), not yet addressed the idea that a citizen of an other 
          EU-country would use their certificate, which by the way is rather 
          hard as there is no universal way to express personal identities 
          either.  The qualified certificate standard does not require 
          globally unique identities so you could even end-up with name 
          conflicts!  PKI is unfortunately an immature technology 
          originally designed for sending e-mail between individuals which is 
          rather different to sending messages between or to "machines" as the 
          latter only "compute" which is not equivalent to humans' 
          "understand".

          
 

          
Best

          
Anders R

          
 

          
----- Original Message ----- 
          

          

          
From: "David Sweigert" <>

          
To: "Anders Rundgren" <>; <>

          
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 
          17:08

          
Subject: Re: [pki-tc] PKI/e-business IETF 
          draft co-editor

          

A short note:

It sounds 
          like you are seeking standards on the process of 
          web-access
control
an dauthentication.  Can you please 
          define "e-Business" systems in a more
clear manner ?

David 
          Sweigert, CISSP

----- Original Message -----
From: 
          "Anders Rundgren" <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 10:25 AM
Subject: 
          [pki-tc] PKI/e-business IETF draft co-editor

> Dear List 
          members,
>
> PKI/e-business IETF draft co-editor
> 
          -----------------------------------------
> I am trying to find 
          somebody else who have also worked with combining
> e-business 
          systems with PKI.  This is currently an unusual combination 
          in
> spite of all that we have heard about the value of digital 
          signatures.
Due to
> this fact, there is an immanent need for 
          addressing this, and in my
opinion also
> a need to create 
          one or more Internet Drafts.   However, in 
          applicable
standard-
> groups like IETF's PKI Working Group, 
          PKIX, there is to my knowledge
hardly
> any persons with 
          suitable backgrounds for such a task.   Therefore I 
          am
looking
> in other places for a co-editor, or at least 
          somebody to try new ideas on
:-).
>
> 
          ===========================================================
> In 
          case you or somebody you know of, could be suitable, please contact 
          me
ASAP!
> 
          ===========================================================
>
> 
          These are the approximative "requirements":
>
> - 
          Knowledge of business systems architectures and 
          technologies
>   like Web, SQL and XML
>
> 
          - Basic knowledge of PKI
>
> - An genuine interest in 
          user- and deployment-related questions
>
> - Basic 
          capability of reading technical standards documents
>
> 
          Note: This effort is mostly technical but if there is somebody 
          out
> there with an interest in CA business models and 
          liability, this
> is also of interest!
>
> This is 
          an initial effort to study:
> http://www.x-obi.com/OBI400/draft-rundgren-pkix-pnppki4ws-00.pdf
>
> Unfortunately you don't get paid by 
          IETF, the best you can hope for
> is that a draft is 
          approved...
>
> In case the OASIS PKI-TC is interested, 
          this could be turned into
> an OASIS effort.
>
> 
          Best Regards
> Anders Rundgren
> Senior Internet 
          e-Commerce Architect
> +46 70 - 627 74 
        37
>
>