The Web Cryptography Working Group will develop a Recommendation-track document that defines an API that lets developers implement secure application protocols on the level of Web applications, including message confidentiality and authentication services, by exposing trusted cryptographic primitives from the browser. This will promote higher security insofar as Web application developers will no longer have to create their own or use untrusted third-party libraries for cryptographic primitives.

An agenda is sent to public-webcrypto 24 hours in advance; minutes follow within a day or two.

Web Cryptography W3C Standards and Notes

• Candidate Recommendation: Web Cryptography API
• Editor's Draft: Web Cryptography API
• Testing: : Web Platform Tests WebCrypto repository
Bugzilla for the Web Cryptography API
• Web Cryptography Use-Cases: Editor's Draft: Use Cases (prior wiki)
  Bugzilla for the Web Cryptography Use-Cases
• WebCrypto Key Discovery: Key Discovery (Working Group Note)
• High-Level API: Editor's Draft: High-level API

Charter, Meeting Records, and History

The Web Cryptography Working Group Charter shows what the W3C has asked this working group to do.

• Recent Teleconference minutes:
  • 16-03-25 minutes
  • 16-03-21 minutes
  • 16-03-07 minutes
  • 16-02-22 minutes
  • 15-11-30 minutes
  • 15-11-16 minutes
  • 16-10-12 minutes
  • 15-09-28 minutes
  • 15-09-14 minutes
  • 14-12-09 minutes
  • 14-10-30 minutes
  • 14-10-20 minutes
  • 14-09-29 minutes
  • 10-11 September, W3C Workshop on Authentication, Hardware Tokens and Beyond,
  • older minutes

Group Membership and Joining

We encourage new members of the group to introduce themselves by email. The full Web Cryptography WG participants list is available to W3C members.

If you want to join the group:

• If you're affiliated with a W3C member organization
  1. Use the form for getting a W3C account
  2. Have your AC representative nominate you using the form for joining this WG.
• Otherwise, contact the chair and team contact about invited expert status. That will involve getting an account and filling out a form for copyright, patent, etc. policies.

Schedule of Deliverables

• April 2012: Group Formation
• June 2012: Expected first public Working Draft of Web Cryptography API spec
• March 2014: Last Call
• December 2014: Candidate Recommendation
• 2015-2016: Implementation and testing
• June 2016: Expected Proposed Recommendation
• September 2016: Expected Recommendation

The working group schedule is an estimate based originally on the schedule in the charter and on progress since then.

Also of Interest

• The IETF JOSE (Javascript Object Signing and Encryption) Working Group
• The IETF RTCWeb Working Group
• The W3C WebRTC Working Group
• The W3C Web Applications Security Working Group
• The W3C HTML Working Group
• The W3C WebApps Working Group
• DomCrypt in Mozilla. Also note that Chrome supports some of DomCrypt.
• Microsoft Cryptographic API
• Microsoft Next-Generation Cryptographic API
• The Stanford Javascript Crypto library

These are documents produced outside the W3C Web Cryptography Working Group that may be of interest to people interested in Working Group. Please alert the Chair of the Working Group if you know of any material that you think merits inclusion.