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P2P, Web Services, Wireless, and Beyond
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
Westin Santa Clara
May 13-16, 2002 -- Santa Clara, CA

Building on the momentum and excitement of the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer and Web Services Conference.

Session
Why Current Public-Key Infrastructures are a House of Cards
Richard Forno, CTO, Shadowlogic

Track: Adaptive
Date: Tuesday, May 14
Time: 5:15pm - 6:00pm
Location: Winchester
This co-authored essay (picked up by several publications, including ST&D Magazine, Communications of the ACM, and more) examines the reality of the alleged "trust" services provided by PKI companies, particularly in light of how VeriSign was duped into generating two Class 3 digitial certificates to imposters claiming to be from Microsoft. To get a Class 3 from VeriSign reportedly means an in-depth verification of the requestor's credentials. This essay shows where the current PKI environment is flawed, proposes some solutions, and wonders if PKI is really necessary for everyone.