ESES/signature and its applications for secure data exchange

More and more devices including PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, and various kinds of appliances are being connected to the network and many people are trying to use them for network applications such as e-commerce. One of the most important requirements for a network application is the security of data exchanged through the network. XML has been widely accepted as a standard format for data exchange in Internet and security mechanisms for XML documents and messages must be provided in the first place. The security mechanisms have to be implemented in Java since Java technology has been adopted for various kinds of platforms including PCs, PDAs and many networked appliances. ESES/Signature is a major subsystem of ESES (ETRI secure e-commerce services) developed by ETRI, and provides security services such as authentication, nonrepudiation and integrity for XML documents and messages for network applications. It has been developed based on XML Signature specifications standardized by W3C and IETF, and integrated into network applications including e-commerce services. Since it has been implemented in Java, it can be ported easily to various kinds of devices including small devices and networked appliances. We propose a design for XML Signature and we explain our implementation, ESES/Signature. We also explain how we apply the ESES/Signature to applications that require secure data exchanges.