Subject: Signature request ?

From: "Sergio Tabanelli" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 18:11:25 +0100

Excuse me if this is an out of topic question.
Working in  the development of a PKI for the public administration and
related services, I am involved in the definition of new PKI messages used
for the management of request and response between two End Entity that need
to exchange signature request (documents to be signed on request) and
signature response (signed documents on response), we call them "sign
request" and "sign response".
Considering the increasing activity of the EU and its Member States
concerning Digital
Signature directives and specifications, I think that this maybe an
inportant issue for the
development of Digital Signature. So I am asking if PKIX or someone else are
actually
involved or plan to involve on this topic.

Sergio Tabanelli
[email-masked]

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From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 09:11:54 -0500

Sergio,

The message exchange you describe sounds like a PKI application, and hence
would generally be addressed in a working group outside of PKIX. For
example, the TLS WG defines how to use certs for secure web access, S/MIME
does the same for secure e-mail, etc.  PKIX tries to focus on protocols and
associated standards that are intrinsic to a PKI.  Admittedly, we have
strayed a bit in adding time stamping and data certification to our
charter. However, the generic signature request and response protocol you
describe sounds ike something one would embed in a particular application
context.

Steve