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by Avamander 37 days ago
ASN.1 is not used because of just bitpacking. There are other benefits to ASN.1 and it's probably one of the least problematic parts there.

People who have thought they can do better have made things like PGP. It's one of the worst cryptographic solutions out there. You're free to try as well though.
1 comments
Muromec 37 days ago
People who though they can do better did JWT, that is not complicated at all and has no bugs as well. Also solves 20% of what asn.1 is used for.
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thayne 37 days ago
Maybe a bit pedantic, but it would actually be the more general JOSE which includes tokens (JWT), signatures (JWS), and key transmission (JWK).

And there is a related binary format that uses CBOR (COSE) as well.

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