PKCS Standards and .NET Framework

This article will introduce the reader to the Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS). The emphasis will be on what is standardized in the PKCS (Public Key Cryptographic Standards) standards and the implementation in .NET 1.1 Framework. This tutorial assumes that the reader is familiar with basic terms in cryptography such as Public Key cryptography, Secret Key cryptography and Message Digest algorithms.

PKCS Standards

The PKCS standards are specifications that were developed by RSA Security in conjunction with system developers worldwide (such as Microsoft, Apple, Sun etc.) for the purpose of accelerating the deployment of public key cryptography. The goal is to facilitate early adoption of these standards by vendors.

These standards are used everywhere in the e-security realm. Any application developer choosing to implement security into his/her application would stumble upon these standards at some point of time. Applications ranging from web browsers to secure email clients depend on the PKCS standards to interoperate with one another. PKCS is defined for both Binary and ASCII messages in an abstract manner giving complete specifications. The representation format for the encoded messages is a preferred format. (The companion documents are ASN.1 = Abstract Syntax Notation 1, BER = Basic Encoding Rules, DER = Distinguish Encoding Rule).

Standards Description

PKCS # 1 The RSA encryption standard. This standard defines mechanisms for encrypting and signing data using the RSA public key system.
PKCS # 3 The Diffie-Hellman key-agreement standard. This defines the Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol.
PKCS # 5 The password-based encryption standard (PBE). This describes a method to generate a Secret Key based on a password.
PKCS # 6 The extended-certificate syntax standard. This is currently being phased out in favor of X509 v3.
PKCS # 7 The cryptographic message syntax standard. This defines a generic syntax for messages which have cryptography applied to it.
PKCS # 8 The private-key information syntax standard. This defines a method to store Private Key Information.
PKCS # 9 This defines selected attribute types for use in other PKCS standards.
PKCS # 10 The certification request syntax standard. This describes syntax for certification requests.
PKCS # 11 The cryptographic token interface standard. This defines a technology independent programming interface for cryptographic devices such as smartcards.
PKCS # 12 The personal information exchange syntax standard. This describes a portable format for storage and transportation of user private keys, certificates etc.
PKCS # 13 The elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) standard. This describes mechanisms to encrypt and sign data using elliptic curve cryptography.
PKCS # 14 This covers pseudo random number generation (PRNG). This is currently under active development.
PKCS # 15 The cryptographic token information format standard. This describes a standard for the format of cryptographic credentials stored on cryptographic tokens.

Note: PKCS #2 and #4 do not exist anymore because they have been incorporated into PKCS #1.

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