THE ADVANCED COMPUTING SYSTEMS ASSOCIATION The following paper was originally published in the USENIX Workshop on Smartcard Technology Chicago, Illinois, USA, May 10–11, 1999 PKCS #15— A Cryptographic-Token Information Format Standard Magnus Nyström RSA Laboratories © 1999 by The USENIX Association All Rights Reserved Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for noncommercial reproduction of the work for educational or research purposes. This copyright notice must be included in the reproduced paper. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks herein. For more information about the USENIX Association: Phone: 1 510 528 8649 FAX: 1 510 548 5738 Email:
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[email protected] acceptance and use of them both by application Abstract developers and by consumers will be muted. We identify the need for a portable format for storage of To optimize the benefit to both the industry and end- user credentials (certificates, keys) on cryptographic users, it is important that solutions to these issues be tokens such as integrated circuit cards (IC cards). Given developed in a manner that supports a variety of this need, a recent proposal in the area, RSA operating environments, application programming Laboratories' PKCS #15 is described and compared with interfaces, and a broad base of applications. Only previous and related work. through this approach can the needs of constituencies be supported and the development of credentials-activated applications encouraged, as a cost-effective solution to 1 Background and Motivation meeting requirements in a very diverse set of markets.