Re: [Evolution-hackers] GNOME Certificate Database Library proposal

[Robert Marcano <robert marcanoonline com>]

On Wed, 2004-04-07 at 03:45, Mattias Eriksson wrote:
> I have now read the document and I think that it is a great initiative. 
> 
> This document mention that a database is needed along with api:s to
> store and retrieve certificates from the database. In one of the figures
> a smartcard backend is shown. Since certificates cant be retrieved from
> smartcard I think that the store and retrieve api will have some
> limitations in this case. 

I have not worked with smart cards (I thought that they provided some
private key directly, now i think that is more secure that they sign a
known message to identify the owner), the reference was placed with the
intention to show the flexibility of the design ;-) . If the library API
is extended to support crypto functions, with the current design the
back-end code to support them could be implemented with only one
function call, load the PKCS#11 module that is implemented by Mozilla
NSS. you can see it by opening Mozilla preferences->Privacy and
Security->Certificates->Manage Security Devices, and locate on the tree
"Generic Crypto Services"

> This means that in order to be able to use hardware devices like
> smartcards the api must include the api to perform the crypto operation
> too.
> 
> //Mattias Eriksson
> 
> fre 2004-04-02 klockan 23.04 skrev Robert Marcano:
> > I have written a GNOME Certificate Database Library proposal (work in
> > progress), and i want to share it in order to know your ideas about how
> > to improve it before start the implementation phase
> > 
> > http://www.marcanoonline.com/development/proposals/gcertdb.html