to call dave winer and nick denton garage people is maybe fun but not quite the right tune. verisign wants to be the enabler by selling ringtones, certificates, deal with domain names, rss and pings. creating a "network of trust" they sing: it's cost effective, reduces complexity and should be understood as usability. if there will be transparity is not so clear. the 5th element of their plans are ebay, skype and paypal united. soon they will send tokens to their users, so that verisign can push their network idea as a second authentification system. that's the deal how they present it at the rsa event in vienna. log in with your password and add the token number to be cleared by.

bad luck if you take a walk in the wild side and someone steals your token (that can be your phone, a one time password (otp) stick, smart card, ...). the network, so they say, is more secure than an application can be; and revocation is not a problem anymore. "we work hard and don't do the interface."

ms recently held its second blue hat conference, where a small group of independent security researchers are invited to the company's Redmond, Wash ... nyt