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Re: [Json] Canonicalization

Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> Wed, 20 February 2013 01:21 UTC

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Subject: Re: [Json] Canonicalization
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On Feb 19, 2013, at 5:11 PM, Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 7:00 PM, Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> wrote:
>> One only needs to canonicalize at the time when one is comparing two objects. We should say *nothing* that suggests that JSON sent on the wire should be canonicalized at all.
> 
> When to canonicalize:
> 
> - when you're signing something that a peer has to reconstruct independently

Canonicalizing is part of the signature process, not part of the JSON creation process. The spec that specifies how to sign JSON will pick what to do about canonicalization; the JOSE WG is dealing with this.

> - when you want to compare with memcmp()

Sure. That's what I said above.

--Paul Hoffman

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