Identosphere 189: EIC Recap • Les Miserables of the Cyber Frontier • Decentralized Identity Comes of Age • Europeum Consortium

Everything related to decentralized identity and verifiable credentials including standards and development: from the enterprise to web3, real world use, policy and research.

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Coming Up

• [Switzerland] Digital Identity unConference Europe 06/18-20 *Sold Out!*

• [Portugal] Open Identity Summit: Research, Experience and Innovation 06/20-21

• [ARES Conference] International Workshop on Emerging Digital Identities Event 07/30-08/02

• [California] DWebCamp 08/07-10

• [South Africa] DID UnConf: Africa 09/25-27 REGISTRATION IS OPEN!!!

• [California] Internet Identity Workshop #39 10/29-31

Can You Buy Booze with a JSON Web Token? 6/20 Rizel Scarlett CascadiaJS

Join this hands-on workshop to learn how mobile driver's license apps leverage a special JSON Web Token and W3C standard called Verifiable Credentials to digitally prove to both the vendor and the delivery company that a buyer is of legal drinking age.

Standards Work

Get ready for eIDAS 2.0 with OpenID 2024-06-04 Indicio Tech

Adding support for OpenID and SD JWT to Indicio Proven doesn’t just mean satisfying EU requirements; it also means customers satisfy EU requirements and get a host of more advanced features to satisfy business needs, such as the ability to issue KYC credentials, Digital Travel Credentials, and Open Badges 3.0. 

DIF Newsletter #40 2024-05

The IOTA Digital Identity (DID) method is now resolvable using the DIF's Universal Resolver. The Universal Resolver is DIF-hosted infrastructure enabling resolution of any registered DID method through its flexible plugin model. This widely-used service is invaluable to the decentralized identity community. Accordingly, DIF has invested in boosting its reliability and stability to ensure uptime and availability of the Universal Resolver.

Recap

[EIC] [x.com-post] The Miserable Society: The Dangers of Data Linking as Seen in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables 2024-06-03 Building on the collaborative talk by Nat Sakimura and Markus Sabadello. 

Humans do not usually possess the ability to search for information across time and space, connecting two seemingly unrelated things. Only individuals like Sherlock Holmes or some superhuman beings possess this ability. Javert is one of them.

[EIC] Les Miserables of the Cyber Frontier 2024-06-04 Damian Glover, Decentralized Identity Foundation

Markus observed that technology embodies the values of the community that spawns it. He illustrated this by comparing W3C versus SD JWT VCs - contending that the W3C format offers more "Liberte" - as well as DIDComm versus OID4VC - arguing that DIDComm features more "Fraternite". Here's a flavor of their conversation (apologies to both for any mistakes in capturing your comments).

[EIC] Decentralized Identity Comes of Age 2024-06-04 Phil Windley

I'm at European Identity Conference (EIC) this week. I haven't been for several years. One thing that has struck me is how much of the conversation is about decentralized identity and verifiable credentials.

[EIC] Key Takeaways from Europe's Digital Identity Conference 2024 2024-06-05 Kuppinger Cole

They share their first impressions of the conference, highlighting the focus on decentralized identity, regulatory impacts, and future trends in identity management. The conversation also covers the importance of networking at the conference and the evolving landscape of identity technology in Europe.

[EIC, Bhutan] EIC Awards 2024-06-06 Special Award Decentralized ID in Practice

The nation of Bhutan, represented by Druk Holding and Investment and the GovTech Agency of Bhutan, received the “Special Award Decentralized ID in Practice” for significant steps towards a modernized digital infrastructure for an entire nation.

Government

[Bhutan] Bhutan’s national digital ID showcased as SSI model for others 2024-06-05 Ayang Macdonald, Biometric Update

She revealed that efforts are being made to increase the number of use cases to include aspects such as air travel, natural resources management and security, audit and tax certifications. Also, a system that will enable access to the wallet on feature phones by people in rural communities has been developed and is being tested, Sharma mentioned.

Wallet-to-wallet coverage: digital identity opportunity arrives with eIDAS 2.0 2024-06-05 Joel McConvey, Biometric Update

Sharma also mentioned that at the core of the SSI project is the His Majesty the King’s vision of having in place a national ID system that places a premium on privacy, a choice which also had some inspiration from successful digital ID projects in India (Aadhaar) and Singapore (SignPass).

EU's blockchain moves under new consortium 2024-06-03 Biometric Update

Designed to support cross-border cooperation between public administrations, businesses and citizens, ESBI is currently in its pilot stage. Some of its projects include supporting the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet in cross-border use cases and deploying it in national digital identities.

Europeum will build on the existing EBSI ecosystem that has made innovative use of Blockchain together with Verifiable Credentials

Product

Combat impersonation using Face Check with Microsoft Entra Verified ID 2024-06-05 Ankur Patel, Microsoft Entra Identity Platform

Once the Face Check is completed, the verifier is given a confidence score which shows a percentage of how certain the person in the live selfie matches the person in the photo associated with the account. This value is the only data the verifier receives. Face Check does not store personal data and it does not give data to the verifier. A higher score means that the false-acceptance rate is lower.

Reusable Digital Identity with Extrimian and SSI 2024-06-04 Extremian

Extrimian ensures that all identity transactions are recorded on a secure, immutable ledger. This integration not only bolsters security but also provides transparency and accountability in digital identity transactions.

DNP and MUFG Aiming to Commercialize Digital IDs 2024-06-03 Global DNP

Based on the verification test results, the partners will work together to commercialize Digital ID. While referencing EU regulations on electronic identification and trust services, or eIDAS⁵, we aim to develop services and products that prevent identity theft and data tampering in electronic transactions by individuals and companies, the social implementation of a secure and reliable data distribution platform, and the development of services and products.

SSI in AI

This Month in Generative AI: Embracing Technology and the Continued Rise of Fake Imagery 2024-05 Content Authenticity

At first I thought that these otherwise reliable fact checkers had lost their minds. Why would they possibly be asking me about these obviously absurd pieces of content? After a quick online search, however, I found that each item was gaining traction.

Building Trust in AI through Decentralized Identity 2024-06-05 Decentralized Identity Foundation

"One of the key aspects with DI is the ability to provide a consistent experience across channels, creating a much safer environment for individuals. For example if you get a phone call from your CEO asking you to transfer money, with DI you can be sure it’s them and not a deep fake of their voice.

Decentralized Web

Building another big fediverse platform 2024-06-05 Ben Werdmuller

Purely hypothetically, I wonder what it would take to raise enough money to build another first-class fediverse platform for the mass market.

Not because there’s anything wrong with Mastodon (or Threads or Flipboard), but I think the fediverse would be healthier with another big platform in the mix.

Research

MODEL-DRIVEN SECURITY ANALYSIS OF SELF-SOVEREIGN IDENTITY SYSTEM 2024-06-02 Yepeng Ding, Hiroyuki Sato; The University of Tokyo

Our framework mechanizes a modeling language to formalize patterns and threats with security properties in temporal logic and automatically generates programs for verification via model checking. Besides, we present typical vulnerable patterns verified by SecureSSI, a standalone integrated development environment, integrating commonly used pattern and attacker models to practicalize our framework

A Semi-Decentralized PKI Based on Blockchain With a Stake-Based Reward-Punishment Mechanism 2024-04-29 Erhan Turan; Sevil Sen; Tamer Ergun

we present a novel blockchain-based PKI architecture designed to accommodate diverse certificate types. Combining the principles of the Web of Trust with a centralized model, our SemiDec-PKI establishes a resilient, distributed infrastructure. 

Explainer

Verifiable Credentials: Making People the Network 2024-05-21 Lucie Macneill Condatis

Will highlights that the key lies in building trust and establishing common standards for verifiable credentials across industries. By collaborating on interoperable solutions, organisations can unlock the full potential of decentralised identity, paving the way for a more secure and seamless digital ecosystem.

[tweet] Simple explainer of verifiable credentials 2024-06-10 Riley Hughes

Development

[ICP] Attribute Support on the Internet Computer 2024-06-05 Dfinity

Not SSI

[tweet thread] Apple has introduced a new system called “Private Cloud Compute” that allows your phone to offload complex (typically AI) tasks 2024-06-10  Matthew Green

Apple, unlike most other mobile providers, has traditionally done a lot of processing on-device. For example, all of the machine learning and OCR text recognition on Photos is done right on your device.

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