scope:

This part of ISO/IEC 7816 specifies an application in a card. This application contains information on cryptographic functionality. This part of ISO/IEC 7816 defines a common syntax and format for the cryptographic information and mechanisms to share this information whenever appropriate. The objectives of this part of ISO/IEC 7816 are to
- facilitate interoperability among components running on various platforms (platform neutral),
- enable applications in the outside world to take advantage of products and components from multiple manufacturers (vendor neutral),
- enable the use of advances in technology without rewriting application-level software (application neutral), and
- maintain consistency with existing, related standards while expanding upon them only where necessary and practical. It supports the following capabilities:
- storage of multiple instances of cryptographic information in a card;
- use of the cryptographic information;
- retrieval of the cryptographic information, a key factor for this is the notion of "Directory Files", which provides a layer of indirection between objects on the card and the actual format of these objects;
- cross-referencing of the cryptographic information with DOs defined in other parts of ISO/IEC 7816 when appropriate;
- different authentication mechanisms;
- multiple cryptographic algorithms (the suitability of these is outside the scope of this part of ISO/IEC 7816).