RFC 2898 issued by the IETF in 2000 is about "PKCS #5: Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.0" and is mainly a republication of PKCS #5 v2.0 from RSA Laboratories' Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) series
Abstract from official RFC file:
This memo represents a republication of PKCS #5 v2.0 from RSA Laboratories' Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) series, and change control is retained within the PKCS process. The body of this document, except for the security considerations section, is taken directly from that specification.
This document provides recommendations for the implementation of password-based cryptography, covering key derivation functions, encryption schemes, message-authentication schemes, and ASN.1 syntax identifying the techniques.
The recommendations are intended for general application within computer and communications systems, and as such include a fair amount of flexibility. They are particularly intended for the protection of sensitive information such as private keys, as in PKCS #8 [25]. It is expected that application standards and implementation profiles based on these specifications may include additional constraints.
Other cryptographic techniques based on passwords, such as password-based key entity authentication and key establishment protocols [4][5][26] are outside the scope of this document. Guidelines for the selection of passwords are also outside the scope.
