Interface Extension

Extensions provide a means of associating additional attributes with users or public keys and for managing a certification hierarchy. The extension format also allows communities to define private extensions to carry information unique to those communities.

Each extension contains an object identifier, a criticality setting indicating whether it is a critical or a non-critical extension, and and an ASN.1 DER-encoded value. Its ASN.1 definition is:

     Extension ::= SEQUENCE {
         extnId        OBJECT IDENTIFIER,
         critical      BOOLEAN DEFAULT FALSE,
         extnValue     OCTET STRING
                 -- contains a DER encoding of a value
                 -- of the type registered for use with
                 -- the extnId object identifier value
     }

 

This interface is designed to provide access to a single extension, unlike X509Extension which is more suitable for accessing a set of extensions.