SPKI - Simple Public Key Infrastructure formats

The IETF Simple Public Key Infrastructure Working Group has defined a format for storing, transmitting and manipulating certificates to support security in a wide range of Internet applications which will require the use of public key certificates.

For the definition of the SPKI format, please refer to [SPKI].

The format of SPKI objects is a simplified form of S-expression. An S-expression is a list enclosed in matching "(" and ")", similar to the recursive list data structure in of the LISP and Scheme programming languages.

A canonical S-expression is a unique representation of an S-expression which may contain arbitrary binary byte strings. For transport over a 7-bit channel, it may be base64 (see [RFC2045]) encoded.

The advanced S-expression format is a complexer form of an S-expression which is not necessarily unique. It is more suited for human reading than the canonical S-expression format.

Examples SPKI certificates can be found in [SPKI].

<URL:http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/spki.html>

Home-page of the IETF SPKI working group.

<URL:http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/sexp.html>

Home-page of the S-expression technology.

Carl M. Ellison, SPKI Requirements, Internet draft,

[SPKI] Carl M. Ellison, Bill Frantz, Butler Lampson, Ron Rivest, Brian M. Thomas and Tatu Ylonen, Simple Public Key Certificate, Internet draft (expired),

Carl M. Ellison, Bill Frantz, Butler Lampson, Ron Rivest, Brian M. Thomas and Tatu Ylonen, SPKI Certificate Theory, Internet draft,

Carl M. Ellison, Bill Frantz, Butler Lampson, Ron Rivest, Brian M. Thomas and Tatu Ylonen, SPKI Examples, Internet draft (expired),

[RFC2045] N. Freed and N. Borenstein, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies, 2 December 1996.

This man-page was written by J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) <jdassen@wi.LeidenUniv.nl>.

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