From: "Gotfried, Colette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
ColetteG> 1- What is PKCS? Does it define the kind of key, the kind of
ColetteG> certificate or the kind of encoding of the certificate file?
It's a set of cryptography standards defined by RSA (primerly). PKCS
stands for Public-Key Cryptography Standards. They can be viewed as
RSA's variants of RFC's, to put it very simply.
ColetteG> 2- What is PEM exactly? Is it a concept parallel to PKCS?
It's a format to make any binary blob mail-safe, that is, turning it
to ASCII. Originally, it was a Privacy Enhanced Mail, and the format
used there inspired Eric Young once upon a time, I think. Yes, it's a
parallel concept.
ColetteG> 3- Is PKCS a standard used by RSA only, or is it universal?
The PKCS's are *defined* by RSA, but apparently used by many more.
ColetteG> 4- Who uses ASN.1 and DER?
RSA and a number of IETF working groups use ASN.1 to formalise what
contents a number of things should have and how they should be
structured, at the very least. DER is set of rules to encode
ASN.1-structured data.
ColetteG> 5- Who uses Base64 encoding, and what for? Is it an
ColetteG> alternative to DER?
BASE64 is used in many places. It has become the most popular way to
turn any binary blob into a stream of ASCII characters. It's used as
encoding with MIME, S/MIME, HTTP, you name it... And it can be used
to encode blobs coded according to DER.
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