PKCS#11 provider issues with min and max size
Tomas Gustavsson
tomas at primekey.se
Thu Mar 15 14:53:30 UTC 2018
Hi Valerie,
Sorry for delayed response, I've been away :-(
Turns out there is a bug report for this already, although related to
RSA keys, not EC as in my case.
https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8183107
I can not add additional information to the issue of course, but the
information we exchanged here should be valuable input to this issue.
Also that there are several users with this issue.
Cheers,
Tomas
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On 2018-02-15 23:51, Valerie Peng wrote:
>
> Yes, please go ahead and file a bug for this.
> Thanks!
> Valerie
>
> On 2/13/2018 6:00 AM, Tomas Gustavsson wrote:
>> Thanks for taking a look.
>>
>> I haven't created a bug for this (yet) Let me know if that would help.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Tomas
>> On 2018-02-09 20:04, Valerie Peng wrote:
>>> Hmm, seems reasonable to support this in the provider configuration
>>> file.
>>> Or, on a similar note, but slightly different approach is to just add an
>>> configuration option for disabling checking the supported key size
>>> range.
>>> Regards,
>>> Valerie
>>>
>>> On 2/9/2018 2:16 AM, Tomas Gustavsson wrote:
>>>> I just realized that a natural place to configure provider behavior is
>>>> in the provider construction, which is also per provider, so you can
>>>> have multiple ones with different configuration. We are already
>>>> using an
>>>> InputStream to construct SunPKCS11, and adding more parameters to
>>>> configure/override defaults would be natural.
>>>>
>>>> I.e.:
>>>> -----
>>>> name = <providername>
>>>> library = <p11 library>;
>>>> slot = slot
>>>> rsakeygenmech = CKM_RSA_X9_31_KEY_PAIR_GEN
>>>> rsakeygenmechminsize = 1024
>>>> rsakeygenmechmaxsize = 8192
>>>>
>>>> attributes(*, CKO_PUBLIC_KEY, *) = {
>>>> CKA_TOKEN = false
>>>> CKA_ENCRYPT = true
>>>> CKA_VERIFY = true
>>>> CKA_WRAP = true
>>>> }
>>>> attributes(*, CKO_PRIVATE_KEY, *) = {
>>>> CKA_DERIVE = false
>>>> CKA_TOKEN = true
>>>> CKA_PRIVATE = true
>>>> CKA_SENSITIVE = true
>>>> CKA_EXTRACTABLE = false
>>>> CKA_DECRYPT = true
>>>> CKA_SIGN = true
>>>> CKA_UNWRAP = true
>>>> }
>>>> attributes(*, CKO_SECRET_KEY, *) = {
>>>> CKA_SENSITIVE = true
>>>> CKA_EXTRACTABLE = false
>>>> CKA_ENCRYPT = true
>>>> CKA_DECRYPT = true
>>>> CKA_SIGN = true
>>>> CKA_VERIFY = true
>>>> CKA_WRAP = true
>>>> CKA_UNWRAP = true
>>>> }
>>>> -----
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Tomas
>>>>
>>>> On 2018-02-09 09:55, Tomas Gustavsson wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the answer. (sorry I was out with the flu for a week)
>>>>>
>>>>>> I am not too keen to add an env var/system property to accommodate
>>>>>> this
>>>>>> kind of PKCS11 library bugs since this should be rare I hope.
>>>>>> Valerie
>>>>> Unfortunately I don't see it as rare and the impact is huge due to the
>>>>> slow turnaround of HSM firmware. Due to FIPS certification and whatnot
>>>>> HSM vendors do not fix simple things like this sometimes in years.
>>>>> This
>>>>> puts customers to a complete halt in the meantime. These are heavily
>>>>> certified environments where re-certification alone takes at least 6
>>>>> months.
>>>>>
>>>>> Having worked with all major HSM vendors for many years I know that
>>>>> PKCS11 library bugs are not rare at all. If we'd be using PKCS#11
>>>>> natively, you can hack around by ignoring bad values, but when using
>>>>> SunPKCS#11 you are stuck with Java's rules unless you patch SunPKCS11
>>>>> which is not for everyone.
>>>>>
>>>>> Due to the strictness of using SunPKCS11 compared to native PKCS#11,
>>>>> some more flexibility in configuration would help a lot.
>>>>>
>>>>> For many years SunPKCS11 have worked great. But also the HSM world is
>>>>> moving faster than they did 5 years ago, and unfortunately this means
>>>>> that we're seeing a huge rise in PKCS#11 issues in the last year,
>>>>> requiring quite a lot of hacking in SunPKCS11 to workaround. In theory
>>>>> it should not be needed, but in practice it is. Faster evolution =
>>>>> more
>>>>> bugs.
>>>>>
>>>>> I just showed two real world use cases that you really need to be able
>>>>> to work around. And these will not be the last. PKCS#11 is a complex
>>>>> standard and implementors will rarely get it exactly right.
>>>>>
>>>>> Increased flexibility and more control around PKCS#11 will be
>>>>> needed in
>>>>> the future imho, or users will be forced to move to other solutions
>>>>> like
>>>>> JackNJI11. We'd much rather use SunPKCS11 but customers (end users)
>>>>> can't get stuck between Java and HSM vendors in a fight who does
>>>>> PKCS#11
>>>>> right or wrong.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Tomas
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2018-02-01 01:07, Valerie Peng wrote:
>>>>>> Thanks for the feedback. I suppose we can ignore values which
>>>>>> obviously
>>>>>> don't make sense such as 0 or max being less than min key size.
>>>>>> However, if the underlying PKCS11 library vendors forgot to update
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> max value as in your comment#2, supposedly they should fix it.
>>>>>> I am not too keen to add an env var/system property to accommodate
>>>>>> this
>>>>>> kind of PKCS11 library bugs since this should be rare I hope.
>>>>>> Valerie
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 1/30/2018 12:22 AM, Tomas Gustavsson wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At some revision in the PKCS#11 provider there was introduced
>>>>>>> checking
>>>>>>> of C_GetMechanismInfo min and max sizes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This has turned out to be a bit fragile. Let me give two real world
>>>>>>> examples:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1. Amazon Cloud HSM report minSize and maxSize for EC keys to 0. The
>>>>>>> Java PKCS#11 provider will happily take 0 as maxSize and refuse to
>>>>>>> generate any EC keys at all. Needless to say, without the Java
>>>>>>> check it
>>>>>>> would be no problem.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 131: C_GetMechanismInfo
>>>>>>> 2018-01-30 07:52:20.740
>>>>>>> [in] slotID = 0x1
>>>>>>> CKM_EC_KEY_PAIR_GEN
>>>>>>> [out] pInfo:
>>>>>>> CKM_EC_KEY_PAIR_GEN : min:0 max:0 flags:0x10001 ( Hardware
>>>>>>> KeyPair )
>>>>>>> Returned: 0 CKR_OK
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (we are reporting this to Amazon as well)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2. Thales HSMs (some?) report maxSize for RSA_PKCS key generation as
>>>>>>> 4096, but will happily generate 8192 bit keys. I.e. the reported
>>>>>>> maxSize
>>>>>>> is not true.
>>>>>>> We have customers who used to generate 8192 bit RSA keys, but
>>>>>>> after a
>>>>>>> Java update can not do so anymore, because Java compares against
>>>>>>> this
>>>>>>> value.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Suggestions:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1. In the constructor of P11KeyPairGenerator where minKeyLen and
>>>>>>> maxKeyLen are calculated, never allow maxKeyLen to be less than
>>>>>>> minKeyLen.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I.e. change the part:
>>>>>>> // auto-adjust default keysize in case it's out-of-range
>>>>>>> if ((minKeyLen != -1) && (keySize < minKeyLen)) {
>>>>>>> keySize = minKeyLen;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>> if ((maxKeyLen != -1) && (keySize > maxKeyLen)) {
>>>>>>> keySize = maxKeyLen;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> To include something like:
>>>>>>> // auto-adjust default keysize in case it's out-of-range
>>>>>>> if ((minKeyLen != -1) && (keySize < minKeyLen)) {
>>>>>>> keySize = minKeyLen;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>> if ((maxKeyLen != -1) && (maxKeyLen < minKeyLen)) {
>>>>>>> maxKeyLen = minKeyLen;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>> if ((maxKeyLen != -1) && (keySize > maxKeyLen)) {
>>>>>>> keySize = maxKeyLen;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2. Allow to ignore checking of maxKeyLen by some means, i.e.
>>>>>>> allow to
>>>>>>> ignore checking against C_GetMechanismInfo if you know that the HSM
>>>>>>> does
>>>>>>> not provide sane values. I.e. an environment variable for example
>>>>>>> reverting back to the old behavior when these were ignored.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>> Tomas Gustavsson
>>>>>>>
>
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