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Cryptographic Message Syntax

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The Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) is the IETF's standard for cryptographic protected messages. It can be used to digitally sign, digest, authenticate or encrypt any form of data.

CMS is based on the syntax of PKCS#7, which again bases itself on the Privacy-Enhanced-Mail standard. The newest version of CMS (as of 2004) is specified in RFC 3369.

The architecture of CMS is built around certificate-based key management, such as the profile defined by the PKIX working group.

CMS is used as the key cryptographic component of many other cryptographic standards, such as S/MIME, PKCS#12 and the RFC 3161 Time Stamp Protocol.