Securing the transfer of information while traversing the Internet requires an X.509 security certificate to guarantee its integrity. Usually, acquiring such certificates from commercial vendors costs a lot of money. Now, however, a new organization called CAcert aims to provide a community-driven free certificate authority alternative.

Security certificates are digital files deployed by software used to broker information across applications -- generally a Web server or an email suite. As with other security-driven products, a certificate must have a central authority or trusted party to vouch for its validity. It is this role which was been fulfilled by commercial entities until of late.

By Daniel Rubio at NewsForge.

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