DESCRIPTION
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.
Canonical S-expression
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.Advanced S-expression
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.EXAMPLE
Examples SPKI certificates can be found in [SPKI].REFERENCES
- <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,
<URL:http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-spki-cert-req-02.txt>,24 October 1998.
[SPKI] Carl M. Ellison, Bill Frantz, Butler Lampson, Ron Rivest, Brian M. Thomas and Tatu Ylonen, Simple Public Key Certificate, Internet draft (expired),
<URL:http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-spki-cert-structure-05.txt>,13 March 1998.
Carl M. Ellison, Bill Frantz, Butler Lampson, Ron Rivest, Brian M. Thomas and Tatu Ylonen, SPKI Certificate Theory, Internet draft,
<URL:http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-spki-cert-theory-04.txt>,17 November 1998.
Carl M. Ellison, Bill Frantz, Butler Lampson, Ron Rivest, Brian M. Thomas and Tatu Ylonen, SPKI Examples, Internet draft (expired),
<URL:http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-spki-cert-examples-01.txt>,10 March 1998.
[RFC2045] N. Freed and N. Borenstein, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies, 2 December 1996.