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Can anybody help me in understanding why PKCS is used? My confusion is that whether PKCS is used to transfer key in between client and server OR it is a standard to encrypt and decrypt the payload.

I know I am asking some basic question But I am new to this security space and I don't want my basic itself to be wrong that's why I am asking this.

schroeder
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Prajeesh K P
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    All right then. So as the name suggests, we are talking about a set of standards, the description of each of them is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKCS – buherator Aug 03 '18 at 10:21

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PKCS (Public-Key Cryptography Standards) is a set of standards by RSA Security. It has many standards and each of those defining set of protocols, here are some of them:

  • RSA private and public keys for encryption, decryption, signing, and signature verification
  • Protocol for a shared key exchange over an insecure channel
  • Certificate request, extensions, etc
  • Protocol for carrying certificate private keys
  • etc

My confusion is that whether PKCS is used to transfer key in between client and server OR it is a standard to encrypt and decrypt the payload.

As you can see, there are plenty of usages for PKCS, I encourage you to read about PKI and these standards and other related concepts in-depth:

Harel M
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