TABLE OF CONTENTS The following Frequently Asked Questions, answered by the authors of this book, are designed to both measure your understanding of the concepts presented in this chapter and to assist you with real-life implementation of these concepts. To have your questions about this chapter answered by the author, browse to www.syngress.com/solutions and click on the Ask the Author form.
| 1. | What is ASN.1 and why do I care? |
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| 2. | Why isn t a format like XML used? |
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| 3. | What standards define ASN.1? |
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| 4. | Who uses ASN.1? |
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| 5. | What pre-built cryptographic libraries support ASN.1? |
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Answers
| 1. | ASN.1 defines portable methods of storing and reading various common data types such that various programs can interoperate. It is a benefit for customers and developers as it allows third party tools to interpret data created by a host program. In many cases, it is a highly valuable selling point for customers as it assures them their data is not part of a proprietary encoding scheme. It avoids vendor lock-in problems. |
| 2. | The standards were written nearly a decade before XML was even a twinkle in the Tim Bray s eye. Despite the fact that ASN.1 predates XML, it is still not the only reason that ASN.1 is preferred over XML. XML is huge in comparison to its ASN.1 equivalent. This makes it less well adapted to use in hardware where memory constraints are tight. Since a lot of cryptography is done on devices with very little memory (smart-cards are a good example... |
