Re: [pkcs11] Groups - Proposal for Secure Key Import using an RSA key uploaded

[Robert Relyea <rrelyea@redhat.com>]

On 06/12/2013 02:44 PM, Tim Hudson wrote:

On 13/06/2013 7:24 AM, Robert Relyea wrote:

Wrapping of private keys are specified generically in Section 12.6 "Wrapping/Unwrapping Private Keys" (version 3.20, section 12.11 in PKCS #11 3.11, section 6.5 in PKCS #11 Mechanisms 2.30 draft 7). They are wrapped in PKCS #8. NSS depends on this because it puts the resulting wrapped key directly into a PKCS #12 bag.

And what will NSS do if it gets a PKCS#8 with a set of attributes contained in it which reference an unknown OID arc?

Short answer: pass it to the token to unwrap;).

Longer answer: Softoken parses the attributes and discards them, so the rest of the key would import. Of course you would get this if you wrap using Mike's mechanism, then try to unwrap using CKM_AES_CBC_PAD, since softoken doesn't support Mike's new proposed mechanism.

Without defining a way to carry the attributes between tokens the wrapping mechanism is not going to achieve what MikeS is looking for as I understand it - which is cross-vendor export and import of keys retaining their PKCS#11 attributes.

Right, but it's a new mechanism so we don't actually have compatibility issues, unless we are talking about stuffing the result back into a PKCS #12 bag. I don't know if any other software is using attributes. It may be if we use PKCS #8 attributes we would have something that could be used in PKCS #12 as well (just not with the guarrentees that the attributes would be properly set when the key is imported.

This is basically two proposals wrapped into one:
- wrap using a temporary AES key saving some steps in what can already be done
- carry the PKCS11 attributes across in the wrapped format

Tim.

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