RE: Sample keys format

Gee -- I have a BIG preference on this agruement.

1.  Public keys are in certificates and I don't really need to have a public
key by itself as the SubjectPublicKeyInfo format is in the certificate
anyway.

2.  I want private keys to be in PKCS#12 objects since that is the only way
I can deal with them at all, however I think that representing them as
PKCS#8 PrivateKeyInfo is fine as this rather directly can feed into a
PKCS#12 object.

jim


-----Original Message-----
From: Blake Ramsdell [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 1999 2:23 PM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: Sample keys format


I have two questions about the key formats that should be used for the
public and private keys.

1. Should the public keys be in RFC2459 SubjectPublicKeyInfo format (that
is, the AlgorithmIdentifier followed by BIT STRING wrapping the public key).

2. Should the private keys be in PKCS #8 PrivateKeyInfo format:

PrivateKeyInfo ::= SEQUENCE {
  version Version,
  privateKeyAlgorithm PrivateKeyAlgorithmIdentifier,
  privateKey PrivateKey,
  attributes [0] IMPLICIT Attributes OPTIONAL }

Version ::= INTEGER -- 0 for this 

PrivateKeyAlgorithmIdentifier ::= AlgorithmIdentifier

PrivateKey ::= OCTET STRING

Attributes ::= SET OF Attribute


The problem that I have (and that I suspect that other people might have) is
that the keys need to be in this format in order to "inject" them into my
code.  Granted it is trivial to add packaging around the keys, I just wanted
to see if there was any preference.

Blake
--
Blake C. Ramsdell
Worldtalk Corporation
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