Portable Symmetric Key Container

This document specifies a symmetric key format for transport and provisioning of symmetric keys (for example One Time Password (OTP) shared secrets or symmetric cryptographic keys) to different types of crypto modules such as a strong authentication device. The standard key transport format enables enterprises to deploy best-of-breed solutions combining components from different vendors into the same infrastructure. This work is based on earlier work by the members of OATH (Initiative for Open AuTHentication) to specify a format that can be freely distributed to the technical community. The authors believe that a common and shared specification will facilitate adoption of two- factor authentication on the Internet by enabling interoperability between commercial and open-source implementations.