[wplug] Meeting presentation idea: Public Key Encryption

[Christopher DeMarco]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 06:04:27PM -0500, Brandon Kuczenski wrote:

> somebody who knows how the Public Key infrastructure is supposed to
> work, from the perspective of the small-time system administrator,
> particularly x509 stuff?  Things like how to create and sign a
> self-signed certificate for secure email and web serving, and how to
> distribute the certificate authority file to users so that everybody
> involved can trust everybody?

If nobody else steps up, I'll take this on.

I'm very well-equipped to talk about PKI theory and operation,
not-so-well equipped to talk about x509 setup.  My PKI has always been
a combination of SSL and SSH - which works just fine for what I've
done, but I'll have to do a bit of research on the other systems.


> The talk could also clarify the differences between a certificate signed 
> by, say, Verisign, and a homebrew one.

Easy.


> A future talk, or the same talk, could then talk about how to encrypt 
> email using PGP keys... what with WiFi becoming ever present (and wiretaps 
> becoming ever easier to get).

Easy as pi.  I'll even demonstrate a TLS/SMTP-AUTH setup, AND for one
LOW PRICE, talk about the differences between your requested PGP +
email and a TLS/SMTP-AUTH setup.


> Does this seem interesting?

YES!

But since I've got SOO MUCH free time (biz plan 2006, doncha know),
would anybody like to tag-team with me on this?


-- 
Christopher DeMarco <cmd at alephant.net>
Alephant Systems (http://alephant.net)
PGP public key at http://pgp.alephant.net
+1-412-708-9660
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