Tag Archives: Ramanan

[Work done from 4th August to 17th August 2008]

At the start of this two week period we were mainly concerned about implementing our early developed system architecture with the identified requirements. We’re doing research and we tested the WSO2 identity solution which is a kind of authentication providing system for enterprises. It uses the Windows card space authentication which has some disadvantages when it comes to speak in terms of high privacy preserving identity solution which provides some functionality like Unlinkability and Anonymity. Anyway we got a lot of understanding of how an identity solution should be implemented in a practical scenario.

Then on 15^th of August 22, 2008 we had a meeting with our project supervisor Dr.Chandana Gamage. It was almost about two hours of meeting where he gave us a lot of information about implementing such eID systems with his practical experiences and they were very much helpful in understanding the problem domain very clearly. Only during this meeting we realized that our existing architecture have some drawbacks in terms of Unlinkability and Anonymity. We were advised to change some portions of our system architecture. With our project supervisor advice we redesigned our system architecture.

Presently Malalasena and Shayanthan are working on developing a prototype web service with WSAS (Web Services Application Server), while myself and Nimal working on the system architecture and the privacy issues.

[Work done from 21st July to 3rd August 2008]

On 24th of July we had our first formal presentation, and the day before that day we completed the presentation and did a demonstration to our project supervisor Dr.Chandana Gamage. He gave us his feedbacks and they were really helpful to make up our presentation in a structured way. Earlier we planned two of us to do the presentation. But later after the feedbacks of our supervisor we reduced our number of slides to 5 where the contents came up to 3 pages, we decided one of us to do the presentation because the unnecessary swaps would have ruined the timing of our presentation. On the day of our formal presentation, the presentation was done to the coordinator Dr.Shantha Fernando and supervisor Dr.Chandana Gamage. The feedbacks we gained in this occasion was an up thrust for us to boost the development activities.

Then we were advised to create a website for our project and we implemented the basic version of our website within 24 hrs at our own domain name http://www.project-eid.org. We’re still in the process of updating our website.

25th of July we had a meeting with Mr.Ruchith at WSO2. He introduced two of his team mates for the future needs because he is about to leave abroad for his further studies. The WSO2 team have developed a product named WSO2 Identity solution. We discussed about the possibilities of getting some idea out of that product. We are still in the process of doing the case study with identity solution.

We have also divided our project responsibilities among team members and we are targeting 15th August as the next deadline for some demonstratable outcome from each member.

[Work done from 7th July to 20th July 2008]

During this two week period we had a meeting with our project supervisor Dr.Chandana Gamage.
During that meeting we discussed the following;

1. Developments so far
We discussed about the current status of the project and described our progress in terms of knowledge gained and possible solutions gathered.

2. Smart card
We discussed about the possibilities of using USB smart sticks instead of normal USB memory sticks. It is a good option considering the internal processor contained in it. But as it is being a commercial product (eg: iKey 2032) and expensive we are adviced to research about the feasibilities of using such an interface.

3. PGP vs CA
OpenPGP is an open source Public Key Server, can be used to issue the keys. But in PGP the problem is trust is with the user not the server. Only the user decides the trust level for each of the keys he/she would encounter. On the other hand using a Certificate Authority (CA) model would add trust to system itself. So we have to decide on what is best suited for us and what more we have to add to these in our need.

References:
http://pks.sourceforge.net/
http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/

4. Kerberos Architecture
Dr.Chandana Gamage also explained about the Kerberous architecture with some practical examples and adviced on how that could be included in our system design

5. Contact for WS-Identity
We found an existing WSO2 project named Identity Server, which can be used as a project component. Our superviser Dr.Chandana Gamage gave us the contact details of the author of that program. We are adviced to discuss with the author named Charith and get some useful ideas.

6. Ideas for first formal presentation
We were given ideas for the first formal presentation, about how to do an efficient presentation with fewer number of slides for this purpose, what important points to be noted and so on..

We also decided to meet with our supervisor regularly to discuss the project progress.

[Work done from 23rd June to 6th July 2008]

We had a group meeting within this period and we made some decisions regarding our project problem domain. Our discussion was based on the following details.The details and the solutions of the problems addressed as follows.

For off-line authentication

1. Can carry a digital identity card
2. Or a USB token
3. Or a mobile phone, applet
4. Or any other portable appropriate medium
5. If needed this offline identity should be able to be verified online.

Then we also decided about our project front-end and back-end infrastructures, then were doing researches on those areas.

We were concentrating on Public Key Infrastructure, USB Smart cards and USB memory sticks.

[Work done from 9th June to 22nd June 2008]

During the period 9th June 2008 to 22nd June 2008 we were mainly doing researches regarding our project issues. We also had a documented meeting in which we divided some search topics among ourselves and shared our knowledge we’ve gathered. Then I posted the meeting details to the moodle.

I was assigned to do some research on cryptography and hardware interfaces related to our project. Throughout this two weeks period I went through some research papers and referred to some books to study about PKI and cryptography. We’re still doing research to find a suitable eID container from two possible choices USB memory stick or USB smart card.

We had a techtalk on 26th June 2008 titled ‘PKI in Enterprise applications’ was really helpful to gather some information for some aspects of our project requirements. It was done by an epiclanka personnel. He explained about some of their products and functionalities. It was not a technical oriented presenatation but it arouse some profitable ideas.

[Work done up to 8th June 2008]

We are working on the project called eID – Electronic Identity. We formed the group as soon as the project discussions started during the training period. Then during the latter part of March 2008 we selected the project title. Earlier we had done a research and were ready to propose a project but later due to various reasons and with the satisfaction of all the group members we selected the eID project.

Then we started having discussions regarding the eID project. Earlier it was through emails and IMs, but then we arranged many project meetings and discussed many issues about the system. During these meetings we shared many of our ideas and subsequently each of us went through some sub categories of topics and started doing the research. We had to refer to many web sites to learn about the existing eID systems, there were many online resources available and by going through them we got a better understanding of the requirements and the problems faced in such implementations. After the discussions with our superviser Dr.Chandana Gamage we had to consider about mainly the privacy issues and so that we went through many research papers related to electronic identity, privacy in electronic identity and electronic signatures. Here also we had the system of each person reading different papers and sharing the knowledge gained. This helped us to speed up the process and increase the productivity.

We met with our supervisor regarding the project documentations twice. He gave us the full support of himself to find the references, research papers and his own ideas. He directed us to complete the project documentations and moderate some project ideas. His help was really appreciated.

Other than those project preparation works we completed two major initial documentation works. They were the Project proposal and the Requirements specification. We had many versions of project proposals due to the changes needed to be done. Our superviser directed us to do the necessary modifications and finally we had four versions of project proposals as the last one completely accepted. Then the Requirements specification had only one version and it was accepted. We did many changes mainly regarding the privacy issues of the eID system because that was the main reason for the failure of such systems in many countries like Australia. So we took extra care of this property and did heavy reading and research to shape up the project proposal and the Requirements specification.