Two ways. Someone hacks your PC and obtains your private key and masquerades as you. I haven't heard of that happening mainly because the private key is encrypted and only decrypted by the application using it (e.g. the email client) upon your approval (you get a dialog asking for use of the private key.
Second possibility is ID theft via a certificate request. Instead of you creating a private key in your browser and sending the cert request to be signed, someone else generates a private and cert request pretending to be you. The way we get around it at work is that the new cert request corresponding to the new private key is signed with the prior private key which only you have access to. There's an initial problem of vouching for a new employee, but there are out-of-band ways to verify identity.
The registration problem is quite common across all ID systems. For example, how to you verify who someone is when they sign up as a voter (never mind looking for duplicates, checking for citizenship, etc). It's very easy to check IDs when someone votes and then look them up on the voter list. It's very hard to make an accurate list.
Good explanation. I may start a separate thread to discuss these matters more fully because there is now an ongoing heist of historic proportions by white-collar crooks connected to Wall St. trading of certain securities.
They use individual investor’s electronic signatures and identities to form bonds of our collateral, all done without the knowledge of the affected investor, taking profits, earnings. proceeds, insurances, credits, and tax credits, most going to offshore tax shelters leaving the unwitting victims exposed to debt and taxes. But they defer taxes for as long as they are accumulating, then stick it to the targeted victims in a timed process to keep the process from generating headlines and causing a general pattern of theft from being uncovered.
Uninformed consent and unjust enrichment lie at the base of this heist now into the trillions.
You’ve never heard of this. It is to say an enormous scandal that is quite complex.
But there is remedy, which is digital in nature. Everything is going digital, as you well know, but the digital evolution has brought a virtual world of ‘our digital identities’ operating in a virtual world we don’t see.
There are now millions of people invested all over the place and they don’t even know it. Their 401ks are compromised.
The remedy has to do with PKI Public/Private Keys in a government regulatory setting. In the context of this great crime, the victims are suddenly stuck with enormous debt that they had no knowledge existed. Public Keys are used for transferring the debt to the unknowing victims. With Private Keys, the credit side, which is enormous, lays hidden. But there are pathways to reveal that side and lay claim to it.
When we are debtors, our government is against us. When we are creditors, the government, for example, Treasury and IRS, are our best friends. They will work with us, right alongside us.
You will hear more about this in 2018. The news of it will dominate unless there is a war that supplants it. But this scandal. in and of itself, may cause a war. When you hear rumblings of 401ks at risk, you will know it’s coming.
The remedy will be in people managing both their Public and Private Digital Keys. They will need education and help. Your knowledge of digital keys will increase your value even if you’re not experienced in the context of what I’m writing about here. Once you see it, you will get it.
Our digitally evolving world is bringing huge risks never seen before. You and others like you are in the hot seats of what will be unfolding as most of the public is clueless. This scandal that I’ve only alluded to, is so enormous that it leaves all other scandals as secondary, but it lays hidden and incomprehensible for now. It is complex which creates a barrier to its dissemination. The criminals behind it are having a field day with their perfect crime. They have become so rich and so emboldened that they have contracted attorney firms globally to do their bidding. My group has a plan to take these law firms down by taking back the virtual base they control causing claims so large on their malpractice insurance, that they will be uninsurable and thus unable to practice. They will also be stuck with a tax bill so large they will never be able to get out from under it.
The criminals at the top of this ring are like a group of Al Capone’s on steroids. They are digitally savvy or have underlings that are. That’s all I’ll say for now.