Marius Marian

PKI past, present and future

This paper discusses some design and management issues in running an open PKI, based on the experience gained in the day-by-day operation of the EuroPKI infrastructure. The problems are discussed with an historical perspective that includes real-life lessons learnt in EuroPKI about certification practices, services and applications. User-reported problems are also discussed to identify problems that hamper large scale adoption of public-key certificates. The article closes with a general outlook for the field and the description of the future EuroPKI plans.

On the Complexity of Public-Key Certificate Validation

Public-key infrastructures are increasingly being used as foundation for several security solutions, such as electronic documents, secure e-mail (S/MIME), secure web transactions (SSL), and many others.However, there are still many aspects that need careful consideration before these systems can really be used on a very large scale. In this respect, one of the biggest issues to solve is certificate validation in a generic multi-issuer certification environment.This paper begins by introducing the problem, also with the help of a famous security incident related to certificate validation, and then proceeds to review the user and system requirements. We take into account several constraints, such as computational power of the end-user client (workstation, PDA, cellular phone), network connectivity (permanent or intermittent, high or low speed) and security policy to be respected (personal or company-wide trust). We then proceed to define a general certificate validation architecture and show how several proposed certificate management formats and protocols can be used within this general architecture and which are the relative merits and drawbacks. Finally, the support offered by commercial products to certificate validation is analyzed, and the path towards better solutions for an effective deployment of certificates is sketched.

Security aspects in standard certificate revocation mechanisms: a case study for OCSP

One of the highly sensitive problems that need careful consideration when employing public-key technology in IT systems is the validation of the digital certificates used. In particular, one of the steps that must be performed is checking the revocation status of the certificate. With real-time revocation checking, a PKI-enabled system that needs to validate a certificate executes an on-line transaction with a specialized server - designated by a certification authority to provide signed responses containing certificate status information. At the end of the transaction, an indication of the current revocation status of the certificate is returned. This paper presents the implementation of a system providing online certificate status service to end entities and proposes a simple OCSP (on-line certificate status protocol) client API which can be easily integrated into PKI-aware applications with the aim of performing on-line revocation-checking. Finally, the implementations performance was measured and the acquired results are presented and analyzed.

Supporting Knowledge Transfer and Mentoring in Companies by e-Learning and Cloud Computing

Small and medium sized companies SMEs assure economic growth in Europe but have difficulties in facing technological, economic and financial changes and have skill shortage. Mentoring together with e-learning and the use of cloud computing services can help SMEs to solve some difficulties like knowledge gaps and resources short-age. This article focuses on aspects of knowledge transfer, mentoring and cloud computing and presents examples worked or coordinated by the authors i.e. the European projects Net Knowing 2.0 http://www.netknowing.com/ DIMENSAAI www.dimensaai.eu and SmartPA www.smartpuba.eu .

The EuroPKI Experience

This paper discusses the technical and management experience gained in the day-by-day operation of the EuroPKI infrastructure. First the context where EuroPKI was born is explained, along with its certification philosophy. Then common certification practices are discussed, along with description of the services and applications offered by the EuroPKI partners. User-reported problems are also listed and discussed in order to identify the issues that hamper large scale adoption of public-key certificates. The article closes with an overview of the EuroPKI activity plans and perspective.

Playfully Coding: Embedding Computer Science Outreach in Schools

This paper describes a framework for successful interaction between universities and schools. It is common for computing academics interested in outreach (computer science evangelism) to work with local schools, particularly in countries where the computing curriculum in K-12 is new or underdeveloped. However it is rare for these collaborations to be ongoing, and for resources created through these school-university links to be shared beyond the immediate neighborhood. We have achieved this, through shared resources, careful evaluation, and cross-country collaboration. The activities themselves are inspired by ideas from the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT, emphasizing playful exploration of computational concepts and interdisciplinary working.

Cooperative e-Learning Approach based on Cloud Computing

This paper proposes a cooperative approach for lifelong learning between academia and SMEs based on cloud computing meant to facilitate and to reduce costs related with operating, accessing, and also to alleviate the management of e-learning strategies, technologies and content. This approach should suit to the business of SMEs and should integrate the existing tools with the cloud.