Unicorn --- Detailed Features

This document provides a technical feature overview of the Unicorn project.

1. Public Key Infrastructure

Certificate Handling

Trust and Validation

2. Digital Signatures

CMS

CAdES

PAdES / PDF Signatures

XML Signatures / XAdES

Timestamping

3. PKCS#11 and Hardware Cryptography

The dedicated unichorn-pkcs11 module provides a separation layer for cryptographic-device integration.

Features include:

This architecture allows private-key operations to be integrated with cryptographic hardware instead of requiring all keys to reside in software key stores.

4. Trust-Service Infrastructure

Unichorn contains models or functionality related to trust-service and digital-signature standards, including:

These models provide a foundation for standards-oriented interoperability and trust-information processing.

Important: inclusion or implementation of standards-related functionality is not equivalent to formal conformity assessment or certification.

5. Responder and Server Components

The unichorn-responder module separates server-side functionality from the core library and GUI.

The project includes service-oriented functionality for areas such as:

The original project architecture targets deployment of service components in a servlet container such as Tomcat.

6. Desktop Application

The unichorn-gui-fx module provides the JavaFX-based client/user-interface layer.

Its separation from unichorn-core allows the cryptographic implementation to remain reusable independently of the desktop interface.

7. Secure E-Mail

Unichorn includes a lightweight e-mail client with support for:

This demonstrates integration of PKI functionality into an end-user communication workflow rather than limiting the project to standalone cryptographic primitives.

8. Browser Component

A lightweight browser component is included as part of the desktop/client functionality.

Together with the mail client, it demonstrates how certificate and trust functionality can be integrated into user-facing applications.

9. Modular Architecture

The project is divided into four principal Maven modules:

Module Responsibility

unichorn-core Core cryptography, PKI, certificates, signatures, trust and validation

unichorn-pkcs11 PKCS#11 and cryptographic-device integration

unichorn-responder Server-side responder/services

unichorn-gui-fx JavaFX desktop/client functionality

The parent Maven project manages the modules and shared dependency configuration.

10. Cryptographic and Supporting Libraries

The codebase integrates or references technologies including:

Third-party components remain subject to their respective licenses. The MIT license of Unichorn does not relicense third-party dependencies.

11. XML Schema-Based Models

The Maven build contains JAXB code-generation configuration for schemas including:

Schema-driven generation reduces the need for hand-written representations of complex standards documents and provides a basis for standards-oriented message processing.

12. Engineering Characteristics

Unichorn demonstrates several architecture and engineering concerns in one project:

13. Suitable Areas of Use

The project is particularly relevant for:

14. Production and Compliance Boundary

Before production deployment, users should perform an independent security and interoperability review.

In particular, this project does not claim solely by virtue of its feature set to be:

Such claims require specific conformity assessments, operational controls, policies, audits, and---in some cases---certified hardware and organizational processes beyond source-code functionality.