RFC 3274 (rfc3274) - Page 1 of 6
Compressed Data Content Type for Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group P. Gutmann
Request for Comments: 3274 University of Auckland
Category: Standards Track June 2002
Compressed Data Content Type for
Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)
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 (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document defines a format for using compressed data as a
Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) content type. Compressing data
before transmission provides a number of advantages, including the
elimination of data redundancy which could help an attacker, speeding
up processing by reducing the amount of data to be processed by later
steps (such as signing or encryption), and reducing overall message
size. Although there have been proposals for adding compression at
other levels (for example at the MIME or SSL level), these don't
address the problem of compression of CMS content unless the
compression is supplied by an external means (for example by
intermixing MIME and CMS).
1. Introduction
This document describes a compressed data content type for CMS. This
is implemented as a new ContentInfo type and is an extension to the
types currently defined in CMS [RFC 2630]. CMS implementations SHOULD
include support for the CompressedData content type.
The format of the messages are described in ASN.1 [ASN1].
Gutmann Standards Track