scope:

International Standard ISO/IEC 15946 specifies public-key cryptographic techniques based on elliptic curves. These techniques include methods for the establishment of keys for symmetric cryptographic techniques, and digital signature mechanisms. The scope of this standard is restricted to cryptographic techniques based on elliptic curves defined over finite fields (including the special cases of prime order and characteristic two). The representation of elements of the underlying finite field (i.e. which basis is used) is outside the scope of this standard. This part of ISO/IEC 15946 describes five different mechanisms for digital signatures giving message recovery. The mathematical background and general techniques necessary for implementing the mechanisms are described in part 1 of ISO/IEC 15946. Digital signature mechanisms can be divided into the following two categories. - When the whole message has to be stored and/or transmitted with the signature, the mechanism is named a "signature mechanism with appendix". - When the whole message, or part of it, can be recovered from the signature, the mechanism is named a "signature mechanism giving message recovery". The mechanisms specified in this part of ISO/IEC 15946 fall into the second category, i.e. they give either total or partial message recovery. (For elliptic curve based digital signature schemes with appendix, see part 2 of this international standard.)