SafeRelay 0.0.1 review

SafeRelay is a certificate authority center, based on OpenSSL, for network administrators who want to deploy certificates on a LAN (l

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 37K Developer: David Stes

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SafeRelay is a certificate authority center, based on OpenSSL, for network administrators who want to deploy certificates on a LAN (local area network). SafeRelay is written in CURSEL.

You may be thinking of using TLS/SSL and certificates on your LAN for activities like:

configuring intranet web servers to use HTTPS instead of plain HTTP
making LAN users connect over IMAP/SSL or POP3/SSL to your mailserver
letting your LAN users connect to your Sendmail SMTP server using certificate client authentication
having LAN users sign or encrypt their email with S/MIME
client authentication based on certificates for intranet HTTPS webservers

The basic idea is that users tend to forget to make a backup of their certificates.

If the PC of the user crashes, the private key and certificate, can be recovered, from the diskette, by the user without help or intervention from the system or network administrator.

If the user has multiple PC's (e.g. a laptop and desktop), it suffices to simply import the certificate from the diskette on both PC's.

If the diskette is lost by the user, or stolen by another user, or if the diskette suffers from a media error, a new diskette with a new keypair must be prepared for the user.

In any case, by giving the user a diskette with a certificate, the user immediately receives a backup. Any tangible medium would also work. In fact, SafeRelay could allow you to use "cdrecord" and a CD-RW drive instead. For important keys and certificates, you could copy the contents of the diskette onto a read-only medium such as a CD.