Comment

Hello All,

This is just a small comment, and could be considered picky. Consider the
third paragraph in the Introduction from [1]:


"When encrypting an entire XML document, the EncryptedData element may
become the root of the new document. And when encrypting arbitrary data, the
the EncryptedData element may become the root of a new XML document or
become a child element in an application-chosen XML document."


Does the second sentence contain a bit of redundancy? If an entire XML
document is encrypted, isn't it treated as arbitrary data? Could the
sentence be changed to:

When encrypting arbitrary data (including entire XML documents), the
EncryptedData element may become the root of a new XML document or become a
child element in an application-chosen XML document."

The way it is written implies that there is a difference in how entire XML
documents (e.g. those that contain a prolog, element and Misc) are treated
versus arbitrary data.

The only case I can think of is where the prolog and Misc entities in the
document need to be preserved in the cipher text (can't think of a great
reason why someone would want to do this, but you never know).

For Example:

Input XML document (Prolog, Element, Misc)[2]:

P
E
M

Encrypted Form:

P
E'
M

Where E' is the replacement EncryptedData and the rest of the document is
unchanged.


Are there other cases? Does this really matter to anyone?


[1] http://www.w3.org/Encryption/2001/Drafts/xmlenc-core/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml, Section 2.1

Blake Dournaee
Toolkit Applications Engineer
RSA Security
 
"The only thing I know is that I know nothing" - Socrates

Received on Thursday, 23 August 2001 18:05:45 UTC