W3C issues XML digital signature proposal
THE XML SIGNATURE Working Group of the W3C has released a recommendation of a standard means of digitally signing portions of XML documents. The proposed recommendation, which must be approved by the W3C director, enables signing of a specific object without sending an entire document, according to Joseph Reagle, co-chairman of the working group. “For instance, I might have an XML document that represents a book, and I want to sign an XML chapter and that’s all I want to sign,” Reagle said. The XML Signature specification uses the XPath transform to identify parts of an XML document. The group’s recommendation is intended to make it easier and faster to sign parts of XML documents, Reagle said.
