encryption

Reading, writing and converting RSA keys in PEM, DER, PUBLICKEYBLOB and PRIVATEKEYBLOB formats

by

This post finishes my epic about the implementation of RSA encryption. See the part I and part II of my post about RSA encryption for C++/Delphi (CryptoAPI) and PHP (OpenSSL) applications.

The main problem we faced was incompatibility of key formats. CryptoAPI uses PRIVATEKEYBLOB and PUBLICKEYBLOB formats to export and import RSA keys while OpenSSL extension for PHP uses PEM format. In order to use both libraries in communicating applications we needed some tool to convert keys from one format to another. The only tool we found for this was OpenSSL 1.0.x beta. Notice that earlier versions of OpenSSL do not support CryptoAPI BLOBs.

Update: It was found later that CryptoAPI has native functions for key conversion. See “Update” section at the bottom of the post.

Below is a command line syntax example for conversion of private key from PEM to PRIVATEKEYBLOB format:

openssl rsa -inform PEM -in private.pem -outform MS\ PRIVATEKEYBLOB -out private.blob



And this example converts PUBLICKEYBLOB to PEM format:


openssl rsa -pubin -inform MS\ PUBLICKEYBLOB -in public.blob -outform PEM -out public.pem



Notice that backslash (\) in format names. You need to type it as it actually escapes the space character.


However, we found some drawbacks in usage of OpenSSL 1.0.x beta:


    

  • There was no Windows build of it available at the time of the post but we wanted to convert keys on Windows.
    • 

  • We also wanted to convert keys directly in our code w/o any need for external application.
    • 



As far as PRIVATEKEYBLOB, PUBLICKEYBLOB and PEM format structures are known, we decided to develop code that will read and write them using low-level functions. It actually took 1-2 days for me to develop that code so I don’t think it’s a really hard task.


Later we faced another problem: PHP versions prior to 5.2 don’t support openssl_pkey_get_details function. Once again, handling key formats directly helped us to resolve the issue by providing a replacement for the function.


So, let me explain how you can implement reading/writing PEM, DER, PRIVATEKEYBLOB and PUBLICKEYBLOB formats with some code examples in PHP for PEM and DER formats and in C++/VCL for CryptoAPI BLOBs. As the task was a part of a commercial project I cannot post a complete working example here. But I will do my best helping you to assemble such code on your own. You can also request our service at Pumka.net.


Read more

RSA encryption for C++/Delphi (CryptoAPI) and PHP (OpenSSL) [part 2]

by

In my previous post I explained that we needed to encrypt a communication messages between Windows C++/VCL client and PHP based web service. We cannot use SSL and decided to use RSA encryption with the help of low-level functions provided by CryptoAPI at the client side and OpenSSL PHP extension at the server.

We also faced and resolved the key incompatibility problem. See my post about this.

In this post I will describe implementation or RSA encryption/decryption and digital signing.

Read more

RSA encryption for C++/Delphi (CryptoAPI) and PHP (OpenSSL) [part 1]

by

This post provides an overview of RSA encryption implementation. Please, read my next post for detailed guidelines and code examples.

The purpose of this project was to protect communication between C++ (VCL) client application and PHP server script with encrypting and digital signing HTTP requests and responses.

Well, the simplest solution for the project task is a usage of SSL (HTTPS). However, this project is targeting shared hosting users that cannot afford HTTPS or SSL certificates.
That’s why we considered a possible usage of GnuPG but abandoned it as hard to implement. Instead, we decided to base our solution directly on the RSA algorithm PGP is based on.

At the beginning of the project I had no idea about cryptography and RSA in particular. I’m still not very familiar with it.
Thanks to the Wikipedia you can read all you need to know about RSA in a single place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA.

What I knew at the beginning is that cryptographic libraries provide tools for RSA encryption, decryption, signing and verification. Thus, I consider this project as a good work. However, it turns into completely nightmare.
Why? Because of incompatibility.
Thanks to standardization of SSL (TLS) all cryptographic libraries are compatible at the top level and can communicate without a problem. However, their low-level functions and key formats are just not compatible.

The conclusion is not very weird:

  • If you can use SSL at both sides then better to use it.
  • If you can use the same cryptographic library at the client and the server then use it.
  • If you’re going to use low-level functions of different libraries then prepare to have a very hard work dealing with incompatibility.

In this post I will cover main issues and conclusions made during the development. I’ll give more details and code examples in the second part of the post.

Read my next post for details and code examples on implementing RSA encryption/decryption and digital signing.

Read more