April 13, 1995

John Lowry
Senior Member of the Technical Staff

Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
70 Fawcett St
Cambridge, MA.  02138  

email: jlowry@bbn.com

(617) 873-2435 Direct
(617) 873-4086 Fax


Project: Location Independent Information Object Security
(IOS)

Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN), under contract to the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), has developed the
Information Object Security (IOS) Tools.  These tools use
object identifiers which are registered as Computer Security
Objects.  ARPA has unlimited rights in the software
containing the objects.  BBN specified, created, and named
the objects under contract to ARPA, and remains the primary
point of contact on all questions regarding naming
conflicts.  The NIST Computer Security Objects Register
(CSOR) assumes no responsibility pertaining to any inquiry
regarding ownership or naming conflicts. 

The IOS software is publicly available and can be obtained
on the Internet for anonymous ftp at ests.bbn.com. 

Object naming information
-------------------------

   IOS Annotation Component:  2.16.840.101.3.3.0.5

      iosp (3) components (0) annotationComponent (5)

   id-ios-annotationComponent


Object definition and description
---------------------------------

The annotation component is one of several components
defined by the Location Independent Information Object
Security (IOS) project.  The IOS components are used singly
or in combination with others to achieve a variety of
security services.

This is a syntax that denotes an IOS annotation component. 
The annotation component is used to carry annotations to a
user document.  It allows commentary on one or more
referenced components.  Commentary can be applied to all
and/or portions of each referenced component.  The
annotations can be signed.

    AnnotationComponent ::= SEQUENCE {
     dataID              DataID,
     SEQUENCE OF         Annotations }

    Annotations ::= SEQUENCE {
     referenceID        DataID,
     general            T61String OPTIONAL,
     specific           SEQUENCE OF SpecificAnnotations
OPTIONAL}

    SpecificAnnotations ::= SEQUENCE {
     type                OBJECT IDENTIFIER 
     note                ANY DEFINED BY type }

Object usage and rules
-----------------------
     
Annotation components contain a DataID with the object
identifier that defines the type of component.  The DataID
provides a unique identification for the annotation by the
combination of the componentType, time, random, and name
items.  The random element distinguishes among components
created at the same time by the same user, with the
EntityName.  The informal name field is provided for those
users who do not have Names.  Such users must take care to
supply an informal name that they can be certain is unique,
such as an RFC822 address.

Typically there is only one annotation component per entity
since that component can annotate all other components in
the list.  The object identifier in the SpecificAnnotations
is either linear or the row column notation, but other
definitions may be added later.  The current two are defined
under the arcs:
          id-ios-annotationComponent-linear and
          id-ios-annotationComponent-rowcol.