The Use of RSA/SHA-1 Signatures within Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) and Authentication Header (AH)

Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract This memo describes the use of the RSA digital signature algorithm as an authentication algorithm within the revised IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) as described in RFC 4303 and the revised IP Authentication Header (AH) as described in RFC 4302. The use of a digital signature algorithm, such as RSA, provides data origin authentication in applications when a secret key method (e.g., HMAC) does not provide this property. One example is the use of ESP and AH to authenticate the sender of an IP multicast packet.