S/MIME keys (was: What Are Some Good Projects For Novices?)

[Venkat]

Paul Rubin <phr-n2001 at nightsong.com> wrote in message news:<7xd75ovsbk.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com>...
> avenkat at myrealbox.com (Venkat) writes:
> > > Thawte gives away personal certs. Yes, free. Signed by a real CA. You just 
> > > have to provide them with some personal information. If you're dedicated,
> > >  you  can also get in on their web of trust. That allows you to have more 
> > > personal information present in the cert (like your real name).
> > 
> > Why the hell I need personal cert issued by Thwate/Verisign?
> 
> So when you send someone signed email, their mail client checks the
> cert and believes it, rather than throwing a dialog saying it has gotten
> an untrusted certificate.  Note that those free certs only validate your
> email address (which of course is enough in many situations) and are
> only good for a few months.

Use, self-signed certs with life time > 1M years:-)
Why should we pay money to thse fucken commercial CAs.

> 
> > I can say, all these certs(I call junkies) issued by these CAs are
> > meta-certs.

well, you contacted some commercial CA for cert. That Commercial CA
has to do some security checks on the credentials you provided. SO,
Commercial CA will assign this task to some agencies.

You will get the cert, once that agency provides the positive info abt
the credentials you submmitted...

Here, the commercial CA is trusting the trust of the agency..
Hence, Meta Trust:-)

Microsoft warns of hijacked certificates 
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5222484.html

regards, Death Master
> 
> I don't know what you mean by that.