Board   E4EC
 
How secure is emailchess?
  Security


Since games are played clearly in email in the club, when we are talking about serious things (such as emailchess), the problem of security sometimes crops up.

Nowadays it's not impossible that somebody writes an email message in the name of somebody else, or catches an email during its path and changes its content. When there is a lot at stake, this danger can not left unspoken.

Digital signatures solve this problem. Using them ensures that an incoming message could only be originated by its sender and its content could not be altered during the transfer.

The most widely used is the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) based public key digital signature system. This is supported in the club by the chess server also.

All the registered players can turn on and off that the server should digitally sign all messages it sends to them. The players get the server's public key (listed bellow) and with it they can verify if the message they received was really created by the server and its content is not altered.

Players can also turn on that the server should accept only digitally signed messages from them. This way they can be sure that nobody can send commands in their name and nobody can alter the message content they composed. If the signature is missing or invalid the server refuses to execute the message and sends back an error report. This also works with players who play from more email addresses.

Using digital signatures requires specific software to be installed on the players' machine that supports PGP based digital signing and verification. Freeware versions also exist out there, for example here: http://www.pgpi.org

But of course, no one should worry about privacy here, since sending an email message in somebody else's name or forging one requires high knowledge level. Those people are threatened in it who deal with really serious things.

In my opinion emailchess doesn't really belong to these very serious things. By all means the possibility is given to use digital signatures.

Here is the public key block that belongs to the chess@e4ec.org email address, or it can be downloaded from here: http://www.e4ec.org/downloads/chess@e4ec.org.asc

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: PGP 7
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=dEUf
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----



ELO Rating

Muscler An ELO rating is the result of statistical calculations designed to measure the playing strength of players. These methods were developed by Arpad Elo and are named after him. The ELO system is in almost universal use and has been further refined by others, notably Glicko, but is still named after its creator.

In devising the ELO scale, some premises were used that are worthy of note. It was decided that a rating of 2000 would be the equivalent to scoring 50% in a US Open Championship. It was also decided that a player's rating would never be negative.

Importantly, the standard deviation was fixed at 200 points. This means that if a player's true strength is 1500, he will score around 68% of his results within the range of 1400 to 1600 (as measured by performance formulae). Another result of fixing the standard deviation at 200 points is that it also defines playing categories. For example, most International Masters and Grandmasters are in the 2400 - 2600 category, most national masters in the 2200 - 2400 category. Those in the 2000 - 2200 category are called Experts, or Candidate Masters.
 
No Viruses Here

No Virus By default, club members do not know each other's email addresses, and all email comes from our server, so no virus can spread among our players.
 
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