Online Identity Card Alliance

Digital authentication using virtual identity cards will be promoted by the Information Card Foundation, a new group formed by online security advocates from Microsoft and other technology companies. The foundation will promote information card technologies, including Microsoft’s CardSpace, which eliminate forms-based identification dialog boxes for authenticating users on the Web. If successful, information cards could stop many forms of “phishing” attacks, in which attackers forge Web pages to collect user passwords, and could promote strong forms of authentication on the Web, giving online consumers and vendors better protection against fraud. However, the foundation faces inertia and complex technical infrastructure.

Strengthening Authentication and Fighting Phishing

The information card is a user interface concept for Web authentication. Instead of entering an ID and password into a Web page, a user selects a set of credentials—the information card—in a dialog box managed by an identity selector, a component running on the user’s PC or other device. The identity selector helps the user decide which information from the card to submit to the target site, and then handles the process of authenticating the user to the target Web site and vice versa with information in the card.