Query about the PKCS#11 encoding of ECDSA signatures.

[Amine Najahi <anajahi@nvidia.com>]

Dear OASIS PKCS#11 committee members,

 

We wanted to get your position about the ‘EC Signatures’ section from the standard:

https://docs.oasis-open.org/pkcs11/pkcs11-curr/v3.0/os/pkcs11-curr-v3.0-os.html#_Toc30061178

 

The paragraph and the ‘Note’ within describe an encoding of ECDSA signatures. To our

knowledge, this encoding (2 octet strings of equal length and padded if need be) is not commonly used,

or at least not as common as the ASN.1/DER encoding.

 

We are considering departing from the standard on this ECDSA signature format, and we noticed other

HSM documentations online are doing the same.

 

Does the committee have any intention to update/reconsider this section in the near future?
Eventually to allow for alternative encodings?

 

Best regards,

Amine Najahi