XML Security Introduction*
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There is a requirement to ensure the integrity (via signature) and
confidentiality (via encryption) of parts of XML documents.
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Operating on a "bucket of bits" is easy. Operating on parts of XML documents
requires the identification and processing of XML in both an abstract (data
model) and consistently serialized (octets) manner.
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These activities are not only applications using XML, they also must address
questions about XML, such as selecting subsets of a document, and then
canonicalizing them.
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This is different from access control, authentication and authorization which
have fewer issues with XML, but face tricky questions about semantics.