W3C XML Security Working Group Releases Four Working Drafts for Review

Members of the W3C XML Security Working Group have published four WorkingDraft specifications for public review. This WG, along with the W3C WebSecurity Context Working Group, is part of the W3C XML Security Activity,and is chartered to to take the next step in developing the XML securityspecifications."XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1" specifies "a processfor encrypting data and representing the result in XML. The data may bein a variety of formats, including octet streams and other unstructureddata, or structure data formats such as XML documents, an XML element,or XML element content. The result of encrypting data is an XML Encryptionelement which contains or references the cipher data""XML Security Algorithm Cross-Reference" is a W3C Note which "summarizesXML Security algorithm URI identifiers and the specifications associatedwith them. The various XML Security specifications have defined a numberof algorithms of various types, while allowing and expecting additionalalgorithms to be defined later. Over time, these identifiers have beendefined in a number of different specifications, including XML Signature,XML Encryption, RFCs and elsewhere. This makes it difficult for usersof the XML Security specifications to know whether and where a URI foran algorithm of interest has been defined, and can lead to the use ofincorrect URIs. The purpose of this Note is to collect the various knownURIs at the time of its publication and indicate the specifications inwhich they are defined in order to avoid confusion and errors... The noteindicates explicitly whether an algorithm is mandatory or recommended inother specifications. If nothing is said, then readers should assumethat support for the algorithms given is optional."The "XML Security Generic Hybrid Ciphers" Working Draft "augments XMLEncryption Version 1.1 by defining algorithms, XML types and elementsnecessary to enable use of generic hybrid ciphers in XML Securityapplications. Generic hybrid ciphers allow for a consistent treatmentof asymmetric ciphers when encrypting data and consist of a keyencapsulation algorithm with associated parameters and a dataencapsulation algorithm with associated parameters." Fourth, "XMLSecurity RELAX NG Schemas" serves to publish RELAX NG schemas for XMLSecurity specifications, including XML Signature 1.1 and XML SignatureProperties.http://www.w3.org/News/2010#entry-8749See also the W3C Web Security Context WG and XML Security WG: http://www.w3.org/Security/Activity