CAcert

Attachment Size Patrick Näf Moser-sig.pdf 69.2 KB Although the CAcert Assurer Challenge has been running for several months now, I have read about it only a couple of weeks ago. So much for my active participation as an assurer in the CAcert project :-/ Anyway, I decided to have a go at it and, since it's not exactly a difficult test once you know a bit about CAcert and the topic of certificates, I passed the challenge rather easily.

So this is it - I am now officially a CAcert assurer. Starting the count from the moment I decided to involve myself with CAcert, it took me roughly 3 months, and 3 meetings, to achieve this, but I am sure I could have done it in one month if only I had been more interested in speed.

All things considered, I would say that it is really easy to get 100 trust points and to become an assurer. I could stop here and enjoy the benefits of the CAcert program so easily won - but I think I will now try to get the hard part done: Be an active assurer and raise my account to 150 points.

Although I will not benefit immediately from having 150 instead of 100 points, I think it is only fair when I try to support and strengthen the CAcert community through activities of my own. Let's see whom I can convince... :-)

Three guys from the Linux User Group Switzerland, Fabian, Marius and Christof, assured me on June 14th 2007, at the Central Starbucks in Zurich, while having a nicely iced coffee. This boosted my trust points from 45 to 100, immediately giving me CAcert assurer status! As a bonus, the LUGS guys let me start my new career by assuring them back in turn. Although they do not benefit from this (already being assurers themselves), it raises my trust point account by another 6 points (2 points per assurance).

On May 31st 2007, I met an Australian guy at his office in Zurich, where he assured and awarded me another 35 points on the spot. Thanks David! This brings my total up to 45 points, which is tantalizingly close to the 50 points required for personalized, 2-year-validity certificates. Let's see how long it takes to get the remaining 5 points :-)

After some difficulties with finding a suitable date for an appointment, I finally met Thomas, my first CAcert assurer on May 5th 2007. We met in the train while commuting to work/to a training course, and completed the CAP process in under 5 minutes. Thomas later awarded me 10 points, the maximum he had at this time. 5 days later, on May 10th 2007, the points were registered at cacert.

Have you ever created a self-signed digital certificate, or created your own pseudo Certificate Authority (CA) so that you could issue your own certificates? Have you done so because you did not want to buy these certificates from VeriSign or some other commercial CA for an exorbitant annual fee? Were you annoyed that web browsers and other client software displayed alarm messages when they encountered your own, "cheaply manufactured" certificates - thereby implying to users that those certificates are not to be trusted?

Enter CAcert, a CA that issues digital certificates for free!