Use Cases and Requirements for JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE)

Many Internet applications have a need for object-based security mechanisms in addition to security mechanisms at the network layer or transport layer. For many years, the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) has provided a binary secure object format based on ASN.1. Over time, binary object encodings such as ASN.1 have become less common than text-based encodings, such as the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). This document defines a set of use cases and requirements for a secure object format encoded using JSON, drawn from a variety of application security mechanisms currently in development.