RFC 2560 (rfc2560) - Page 1 of 23
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Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group M. Myers
Request for Comments: 2560 VeriSign
Category: Standards Track R. Ankney
CertCo
A. Malpani
ValiCert
S. Galperin
My CFO
C. Adams
Entrust Technologies
June 1999
X.509 Internet Public Key Infrastructure
Online Certificate Status Protocol - OCSP
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved.
1. Abstract
This document specifies a protocol useful in determining the current
status of a digital certificate without requiring CRLs. Additional
mechanisms addressing PKIX operational requirements are specified in
separate documents.
An overview of the protocol is provided in section 2. Functional
requirements are specified in section 4. Details of the protocol are
in section 5. We cover security issues with the protocol in section
6. Appendix A defines OCSP over HTTP, appendix B accumulates ASN.1
syntactic elements and appendix C specifies the mime types for the
messages.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document (in uppercase, as shown) are to be interpreted as described
in [RFC 2119].
Myers, et al. Standards Track