1. Introduction

1. Introduction

This document provides recommendations for the implementation of password-based cryptography, covering the following aspects:

• key derivation functions
• encryption schemes
• message authentication schemes
• ASN.1 syntax identifying the techniques

The recommendations are intended for general application within computer and communications systems and, as such, include a fair amount of flexibility. They are particularly intended for the protection of sensitive information such as private keys as in PKCS #8 [PKCS8] [RFC5958]. It is expected that application standards and implementation profiles based on these specifications may include additional constraints.

Other cryptographic techniques based on passwords, such as password-based key entity authentication and key establishment protocols [BELLOV] [JABLON] [WU] are outside the scope of this document. Guidelines for the selection of passwords are also outside the scope. This document supersedes PKCS #5 version 2.0 [RFC2898] but includes compatible techniques.

This document represents a republication of PKCS #5 v2.1 [PKCS5_21] from RSA Laboratories' Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) series.