Requirements for the "Transaction-PKI" projct
=============================================

In order to provide improved security against rising risks,
the following capabilities are desirable for web-applications:

1) The ability to digitally sign a web-form using public-key
   cryptography with a local private-key - i.e. the private-key
   must reside on the client side of the application.  The
   signed transaction must propagate all the way to the end
   application, as opposed to just the web-server;

2) The ability to encrypt web-form content using public-key
   cryptography with public-keys embedded in the form, or that
   can be found using URIs at encrypt-time.  The encrypted
   transaction must propogate all the way to the end-application
   as opposed to just the web-server;

3) The signing capability must be native in the browser; i.e.
   there must be no downloaded applets or locally installed
   plug-ins.  Just as the browser natively performs crypto
   operations to establish an SSL/TLS session, it must so
   perform the signing/verification of the form-content in the
   transaction. The encryption/decryption capabilities must be
   native to the browser too;

4) The signing capability must work with any locally-defined
   crypto token, known to the browser, using either the CAPI
   and/or PKCS#11 interfaces;

5) The capability must leverage existing standards such as
   XHTML, JavaScript, XForms, XML Signature, XML Encryption,
   OASIS Web Services Security, etc. where it can.  If new
   code needs to be written, then the gap must be identified
   and defined very clearly;

6) The capability must work with all major browsers - Firefox,
   MSIE, Opera and Safari;


Arshad Noor
Chair
Application Guidelines Subcommitee