NAME

       SPKI - Simple Public Key Infrastructure formats

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.

AUTHOR

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

SEE ALSO

       lsh_keygen(1)