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62

answers:

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I heard that "PKCS#1 v2.0 encryption is usually called OAEP encryption".

I'll need some kind of "official" doc saying this before using it on my project. I'm trying to find it with no sucess. Any idea where can I find it?

Thanks!

(by the way, could anyone with more than 1500 reputation create the tag PKCS#1? Thanks!)

A: 

It might be the case that the other poster said that it's "usually called OAEP encryption" because PKCS#1 v2.0 is when OAEP was introduced to the standard, according to the history located in this pdf. (see page 56). I don't know if anyone actually addresses v2.0 as OAEP. It should be noted that I'm not intimately involved in using these standards, so that could be the case and I wouldn't know it.

(edited for spelling/grammar errors)

Jan Gorzny
+2  A: 

PKCS#1, prior to version 2.0, described a single encryption scheme. From version 2.0, the OAEP padding was added to PKCS#1, and the previous encryption scheme has been retroactively called "v1.5" (because that's the only scheme which was described in the 1.5 version of PKCS#1). In PKCS#1 itself, the two encryption schemes are called "RSAES-OAEP" and "RSAES-PKCS1-V1_5".

The OAEP padding can theoretically be used with many other asymmetric encryption schemes, but RSA is (by far) the most widely used asymmetric encryption system.

Coloquially, RSA encryption with OAEP padding is often known as "PKCS#1 v2.0 encryption" since the older scheme is called "PKCS#1 v1.5 encryption", but this is not an "official" name. Both OAEP and v1.5 are standard and supported by the recent versions of PKCS#1, so v1.5 is no less a "v2.0" scheme than OAEP. As I said above, the official name (as defined in PKCS#1) is "RSAES-OAEP".

Thomas Pornin
I'm having a hard time to find something related to "RSAES-OAEP" in the java docs, do you have any link for me?
Tom Brito
@Tom: look for "OAEP" in http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/security/StandardNames.html
Thomas Pornin
I had saw this. You say the official name is "RSAES-OAEP", but I didn't found this name mentioned in this page or in PKCS#1V2 doc.
Tom Brito
@Tom: in PKCS#1 v2.1, "RSAES-OAEP" is used extensively in section 7. It is even the title of section 7.1. How can it be missed ?
Thomas Pornin
I was looking another PKCS #1 v2.0 doc, you're right. Thanks!
Tom Brito