Subject: e-Government uses "Authority-stamp-signatures"

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 15:18:04 +0100

Dear All,

It may be interesting to know that Swedish authorities are currently launching a Web Services-like system called SHS, where authorities communicate with each other through web-server "nodes" where out-going messages are automatically signed by the authority identified as an "entity" (organization), rather by an individual associated to the authority.

For the majority of messages there will be no individual signatures (such may though be stored locally as proof if implemented).   For those messages that for some reason would benefit from individuals' signatures also being transmitted, such signatures are a part of message "payload".  That is, the outermost "authoritative" signature is always the sending organization's.

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It seems that there is a paradigm-shift in the making, which could have a very positive effect on the deployment of digital  signatures although commercial CAs have quite a bit to cater for, as practically none of these, currently produce suitable certificates.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If this scheme works for government authorities, it should definitely work for e-business as well.

A side-effect of the SHS-scheme is that specific "employee-certificates" become redundant, as the optional dual-signed messages create "virtual" employee-certificates of any sophistication, including the possible inclusion of authorization or role data, effectively eliminating attribute certificates for organization-internal authorizations.

Anders Rundgren
Senior Internet e-Commerce Architect

---

From: "Jimi Thompson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 21:19:03 -0800

<SNIP>
For the majority of messages there will be no individual signatures (such
may though be stored locally as proof if implemented).   For those messages
that for some reason would benefit from individuals' signatures also being
transmitted, such signatures are a part of message "payload".  That is, the
outermost "authoritative" signature is always the sending organization's.
</SNIP>

Anders,

In order to establish non-repudiation, won't you need the signature of a
person and not just proof that the email passed through a specific server?

Thanks,

Ms. Jimi Thompson

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed
by those who are dumber. - Plato

---

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 18:05:40 +0100

Jimi,

>In order to establish non-repudiation, won't you need the signature
>of a person and not just proof that the email passed through a specific server?

I hope you can apologize me, but I have a very simplistic way of
looking at repudiation of  signed messages that goes as follows:

- Personal signature: "I haven't sent that message!"
- Organization/server-based signature: "WE haven't sent that message!"

As not a single such event has so far been publicly documented, it
is really all up to pure speculation,  but I can't see that the technical
processes or the rather unlikely legal processes needed to clear up
the two cases above will differ at all.  In spite of the literally "eons"
of time spent on creating digital signature laws.

Well, if there _is_ a difference, I believe that the organization-variant
will prove to be easier to resolve, as archiving, user authorization,
time-stamping, etc. is built-in into the very core of the architecture
of such systems!

There are people who believe that the scheme represented by SHS
is a "Quick and dirty" solution.  I would rather claim that this is a
flexible "Mammal" given its unlimited extensibility with respect
to PKI, while static schemes like the US Federal PKI  seems more
related to "Dinosaurs", just waiting for extinction.

cheers,
Anders

---

From: "Hans Nilsson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 10:24:18 +0100

Dear all,

For SHS, I think the explanation is very simle: the digital signature
mechanism is used to provide data integrity and origin authentication
for the sending organization, and has nothing to do with binding
approval of the document (a.k.a non-repudiation). It's just the
electronic counterpart to the paper and its letter-head. In Sweden we
now call this "electronic stamp".

Once again people (and this time Jimi and Anders are the guilty ones :-)
make the direct association from the word "signature" to meaning
"willful act" or "non-repudiation", terms which we by now, after many
years of discussion, all agree we never will be able to define in
technical terms.

During the last year, someone (and I dont remember who) said
approximately that "the person who in the 70s coined the term
"signature" for the mechanism of "RSA-transformation with a private key"
made a great disservice to the PKI community, since it ever since then
has been a source of great confusion". Could the name of the culprit be
hidden in the famous initials DH or RSA? And could the author of the
statement above plese make himself visible so I can cite him correctly
in the future?

Please remember: Digital signature (ouch!) is just a technical
mechanism, that can be used for a large variety of services...

Hans

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
On Behalf Of Anders Rundgren
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 6:06 PM
To: Jimi Thompson; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: e-Government uses "Authority-stamp-signatures"

Jimi,

>In order to establish non-repudiation, won't you need the signature of 
>a person and not just proof that the email passed through a specific 
>server?

I hope you can apologize me, but I have a very simplistic way of looking
at repudiation of  signed messages that goes as follows:

As not a single such event has so far been publicly documented, it is
really all up to pure speculation,  but I can't see that the technical
processes or the rather unlikely legal processes needed to clear up the
two cases above will differ at all.  In spite of the literally "eons" of
time spent on creating digital signature laws.

Well, if there _is_ a difference, I believe that the
organization-variant will prove to be easier to resolve, as archiving,
user authorization, time-stamping, etc. is built-in into the very core
of the architecture of such systems!

There are people who believe that the scheme represented by SHS is a
"Quick and dirty" solution.  I would rather claim that this is a
flexible "Mammal" given its unlimited extensibility with respect to PKI,
while static schemes like the US Federal PKI  seems more related to
"Dinosaurs", just waiting for extinction.

cheers,
Anders

---

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 16:29:52 +0100

Hans,

I gladly take the blame for introducing some confusion :-)

"Binding" is at least as problematic as "Signature" when entering the O2O-space [1], and as far as I know, there are in SHS no requirements for additional signatures.  It has only been mentioned as a possibility.  Still SHS is not designed for communicating "trivia".  So if one authority adds this, and another adds that as input to an application, the final decision, regardless if carried out by a computer or a human being, is to a very high extent dependent on "authority-stamps".  Even when decisions are actually signed by humans, that does not necessarily implicate (due to privacy reasons), that external parties should ever get decisions in the original format, which may be kept "inside" only.  BTW, the original format may be in XML, while the "customer" probably has more use of an [authority-signed] PDF.

To get some proportions on this, it is sort of "nice" to know (well...) that "e-sign in US on-line banks is equivalent to hitting the OK-button" (a recent citation of an info-security-department of one of the largest US banks).

cheers,
Anders

1] bound to an individual or to the organization or both?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hans Nilsson" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 10:24
Subject: Confusion regarding "Authority-stamp-signatures"

Dear all,

Hans

-----Original Message-----

Jimi,

cheers,
Anders

---

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 13:38:51 -0500

At 3:18 PM +0100 12/13/02, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>Dear All,
>
>It may be interesting to know that Swedish authorities are currently 
>launching a Web Services-like system called SHS, where authorities 
>communicate with each other through web-server "nodes" where 
>out-going messages are automatically signed by the authority 
>identified as an "entity" (organization), rather by an individual 
>associated to the authority.
>
>For the majority of messages there will be no individual signatures 
>(such may though be stored locally as proof if implemented).   For 
>those messages that for some reason would benefit from individuals' 
>signatures also being transmitted, such signatures are a part of 
>message "payload".  That is, the outermost "authoritative" signature 
>is always the sending organization's.
>
>
>It seems that there is a paradigm-shift in the making, which could 
>have a very positive effect on the deployment of digital  signatures 
>although commercial CAs have quite a bit to cater for, as 
>practically none of these, currently produce suitable certificates.
>
>
>A side-effect of the SHS-scheme is that specific 
>"employee-certificates" become redundant, as the optional 
>dual-signed messages create "virtual" employee-certificates of any 
>sophistication, including the possible inclusion of authorization or 
>role data, effectively eliminating attribute certificates 
>for organization-internal authorizations.
>
>Anders Rundgren

This is not a new concept in other environments, e.g., the US DoD 
Defense Message System sends all official messages with signatures 
that represent organizations, not individuals. The system was 
developed and initially deployed starting in the early 90's, I 
believe.

Steve

---

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 11:16:25 +0100

Re: e-Government uses "Authority-stamp-signatures"Steve,

<snip>
  This is not a new concept in other environments, e.g., the US DoD Defense Message System sends all official messages with signatures that represent organizations, not individuals. The system was developed and initially deployed starting in the early 90's, I believe.
This is [good] news in my opinion, being an advocate for this kind of "architecture for secure inter-organization information-management". I was though unable to find any decent "rationale" type of paper.  To be complete, I would like to mention the pre-PKI systems currently performing maybe some 99% of all inter-organization "e-transactions", that practically all authenticate messages at the business partner (organization) level.  It is a bit puzzling that the PKI community in general seems to have a problem with this simple, time-proven, and efficient scheme.
 
BTW, OASIS will hopefully address these issues in a newly formed PKI TC http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/pki

cheers
Anders

---

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 11:49:13 -0500

At 11:16 AM +0100 12/21/02, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>Steve,
>This is [good] news in my opinion, being an advocate for this kind 
>of "architecture for secure inter-organization 
>information-management". I was though unable to find any decent 
>"rationale" type of paper.  To be complete, I would like to mention 
>the pre-PKI systems currently performing maybe some 99% of all 
>inter-organization "e-transactions", that practically all 
>authenticate messages at the business partner (organization) level. 
>It is a bit puzzling that the PKI community in general seems to have 
>a problem with this simple, time-proven, and efficient scheme.

I don't think the PKI community has a problem with this model, so 
long as it accurately reflects the underlying authorization scheme.

  In the case of the U.S. DoD DMS, the messages being exchanged are 
formal messages between organizations, not individuals. Certain 
individuals within an organization are designated as "release 
authorities" who determine what is sent as a message on behalf of an 
organization. Local means are employed to provide accountability for 
this function. Also, the DMS is the latest version of this messaging 
function, which was previously implemented as AUTODIN, so the formal 
mechanisms etc, were all worked out 30 years ago.

Steve