Web Socket for client side signatures

["Andreas Kuehne" <kuehne@trustable.de>]

Hi all,

I would like to give a short idea of what the web socket spec is about and how it can be used in the context of DSS-X.

The web socket targets the asymmetry in web browser communication. The client can address the server at any time but the server has no way to actively push information to the client. A common workaround for this is to rely on the client to poll for updated information. The POAS works this way.
The web socket spec uses a different approach. It needs an initial call from the client to the server, too. But the trick here is _not_ to close the response channel and use it to transport arbitrary data. So data can be pushed to the client without any new connection setup requirement. But the web socket approach has to re-implement some transport mechanisms usually taken for granted ...

I would have seen this approach as just another intersting technical hack but within the HTML 5 effort the web socket spec got 'promoted' and now there is build-in support in all current browsers and many server side implentation are avialable. Some browsers currently disable web socket by default because of a security issue regarding cache poisoning. But this should be fixed soon.

So web socket will offer an efficient way to implement the client side signature creation. I would recommend to mention it as a way of implementation. I'm not sure if we invest in a  formal 'web socket binding' as the we socket protocol is very low level ...

A quick introduction with links to relevant docuemn ts is given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSockets .

Greetings

Andreas   
 



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